Tuesday Dec 1, 2020

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

San Juan The

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Amanda Seyfried Finally Stakes Her Claim P20

More Restrictions Ahead?

PDP Electoral Commissioner Alleges Double Voting in SJ P4

Emergency Meeting at La Fortaleza

Most Republicans Say They Doubt the Election P9

Governor Anticipates Changes in Executive Order; To Address COVID-19 Crisis Along with PRNG, Health & Economic Development Chiefs Details on Vaccination Plan

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

P3-4

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING

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December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Governor to seek towns’ help to fight COVID-19

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lanked by Economic Development and Commerce Secretary Manuel Laboy and National Guard Adj. Gen. José Reyes, Gov Wanda Vázquez Garced announced Monday there will be a meeting with mayors whose municipalities have a high density of COVID-19 cases to reinforce efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus that causes the sometimes fatal disease.

The governor said the meeting will be announced later this week. The municipalities with the most COVID-19 cases are Ceiba, Camuy and Maunabo with over 25 percent. She said that in rural towns, bars are opening up to the public in violation of the executive order.

“While most businesses are complying with restrictions, it is the responsibility of citizens [to manage COVID-19],” she said. “We do not dismiss the possibility of more severe restrictions because although businesses are complying we have seen in social media how citizens are behaving.”

She said the disease is more prevalent among young people and in community gatherings.

Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano said he expects the year to end with 1,400 deaths. The number of hospitalized people went down to 500, from the 622 hospitalizations reported earlier. The Health secretary said that following a meeting with economic officials, Health and public safety authorities will decide on their next steps. He described the latest incidents in Puerto Rico in which people have violated restrictions such as a local hotel that had a clandestine discotheque.

“We hope citizens act prudently,” he said.

González Feliciano noted that there is already a protocol in place to start vaccinations, but people should not put all their hopes in it. The process will require two vaccines.

“It will take months for people to achieve herd immunity,” he said.

He rejected the idea that COVID-19 was a conspiracy as the island has had more than 1,000 deaths.

Laboy said Puerto Rico is on orange alert. On Nov. 25, he announced the pre-holiday shopping season and a campaign for people to buy from local merchants. He said he has been in contact with business groups such as the United Retailers Association and the Restaurant Association to determine the performance of the business sector.

“The truth is that in general terms, flow of people has been slow. There are fewer people going out,” Laboy said. “The information that we have is that more people are buying online.”

Laboy urged businesses to be responsible amid the pandemic.

“We want merchants to continue to be responsible, impose safety protocols and not let their guard down,” he said. “Businesses that violate protocols or are not responsible must face the consequences.”

Police Commissioner Henry Escalera said there have been 1,038 arrests and more than 2,033 tickets have been issued. The interagency group has conducted 7,500

interventions with businesses. Reyes and Assistant Secretary Irma Cardona spoke about vaccination logistics, which is slated to start this month.

Earlier Monday as mayors sought a lifting of restrictions on the operations of businesses, González Feliciano said government agencies were going to meet to analyze possible changes to the latest executive order issued by Vázquez to stop the rise in infections and deaths from COVID-19.

Although December is expected to be worse than November, mayors want the central government to delegate the imposition of restrictions to the municipalities as many are in critical state due to lost revenues.

González Feliciano declined to say whether there will be a lockdown in the future but said restrictions will be made more stringent.

“I don’t like to talk about lockdown but if it is needed, there will be additional restrictions to ensure the system can absorb anything happening over the holidays and Three Kings Day,” he said.

“I am concerned about the level of fatigue of the medical staff and our nurses,” the Health chief said. “Because it is still the same circle of people who are working.”

Ten doctors, and at least 11 nurses, respiratory therapists, and other health care personnel on the island have died from COVID-19.

González Feliciano called attention to the continuous rise in cases of COVID-19 in Puerto Rico.

Island mayors, such as those in Guaynabo and Coamo, want bars to open in a controlled fashion. Towns have lost revenues as a result of the lockdown.

Cataño Mayor Félix Delgado said he knows where the bars are and can warn owners that if they do not follow strict guidelines they are going to be shut down.

Some mayors noted that there are businesses operating in a clandestine fashion.

Guaynabo Mayor Ángel Pérez said “we can reach certain agreements and if they are not fulfilled, then you will be shut down. What happens in one city, does not happen in another.”

Physicians & Surgeons Association President Víctor Ramos said most people become infected in bars. He said 80 percent of the people who are infected show no symptoms and spread the virus to the rest of the population.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

PRNG Adj. Gen. Reyes: COVID-19 vaccine first phase expected to begin mid-December

By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

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uerto Rico National Guard (PRNG) Adj. Gen. José Reyes said Monday in an interview on Radio Isla that the first COVID-19 vaccination phase is closer than ever as “the expectation is to start receiving vaccines next December 12 and 13.”

“We have divided the first phase into three sub-phases,” Reyes said. “Phase 1A, all that are in the homes for the elderly and people over 65. And … personnel who work in hospitals.”

He said the PRNG might be involved in the first phase for the entire month of December and “possibly January.”

“And then, we begin with phase B, within the first phase,” the adjutant general said. “Subphase 1B involves all the first responders and essential personnel who keep Puerto Rico running.”

Reyes told reporter Julio Rivera Saniel that among the essential personnel are truck drivers, people who work in the food distribution chain, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority workers, first response personnel and “every other

employee that is necessary to keep Puerto Rico running.”

He estimated that “around 400,000 to 500,000 people” will be vaccinated in the first phase.

As for the recent incident that took place at Terminal B of Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, in which a civilian physically assaulted a PRNG officer, Reyes said the fact that the altercation took place is “regrettable.”

“PRNG, in collaboration with the Department of Health,

has been working for eight months conducting medical screening testing at the airport. [This is] a regrettable moment,” he said. “Our guys asked kindly, as they do with everyone in public, for Adrien Williams to wear his face mask, for his and everyone else’s health.”

Meanwhile, the PRNG commander told the radio outlet that “we tend to think that the person was under the influence of alcohol and that will be under investigation.”

“Certainly, [Williams] got hostile and assaulted one of my guys, and our other guys defended themselves before throwing him to the ground and restraining him until the state police arrived and they took the case from there,” he said.

Meanwhile, the island Health Department reported Monday that COVID-19 deaths had reached 1,106, with 622 hospitalized due to the coronavirus, 16 more than in the previous report.

At press time, the department reported 12 deaths due to COVID-19 since Sunday’s report, while 732 additional confirmed positive, 77 probable and 594 suspicious cases were registered in the daily report.

Meanwhile, 99 patients were under intensive care, three fewer than Sunday. Eighty-four people remained on ventilator support, three fewer than in the previous report.

PDP electoral commissioner points out possible double voting schemes in San Juan

By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to the Star

I

n the midst of the general vote count, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Electoral Commissioner Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz said Monday that there are 92 possible cases of double voting in San Juan Precincts 1 and 2.

“After completing all regular polling stations on the night of the elections, in San Juan Precincts 1 and 2, the total number of polling stations for each precinct was 98. In San Juan Precinct 1, 26 out of 98 voting centers had 43 voters who, even though they appeared on the excluded list, they authorized them to vote again in that station, while in San Juan Precinct 2, 25 out of 98 regular polling stations had 49 voters that voted again although they were on the excluded list,” Cruz said.

Cruz said he was uncertain about recording the cases as double votes as it remains unclear why the voters were excluded from voting in the Nov. 3 elections. Thus, he said, it was important that the State Elections Commission (SEC) investigate the cases to discourage such illicit activity.

“If there’s a pattern of fraudulently cast votes, the Commission can’t certify these things; they must broadcast and look at what measures will be taken so this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The PDP electoral commissioner noted that the supposed procedure the SEC had to activate was to let the citizens in question cast their votes by hand because the exclusion could have been “a mistake by the Commission.”

He pointed out that the proportion of alleged double vote cases took place amid the record-breaking number of early

vote requests, as around 230,000 requests were registered.

“I can’t say that every voter conducted double voting, but what I mean with this is that we have now 92 voters [who may have double voted] already, and this could become a pattern from here on out,” Cruz said. “I warned about it from the first day when the Precinct 1 ballot containers were opened right before the Superior Court ruling halted the general vote count; from 16 polling stations, there were nine that had this issue, [and] there’s a pattern now.”

“We can’t hide it under the rug,” he added. “This has to be exposed for the benefit of those who voted honestly.”

Meanwhile, Cruz said the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruling that electoral officers had to get up from the vote count desks immediately with the early voters’ list in order to issue a complaint at the Balance Board “should not be the procedure”

PDP Electoral Commissioner Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz said he was uncertain about recording the cases as double votes as it remains unclear why the voters were excluded from voting in the Nov. 3 elections.

because it might slow down the general vote count even more and discourage parties from conducting investigations.

“My proposal is that the officers who are assigned at the vote count table that have the early voting lists on hand, who sometimes don’t have any other tasks assigned for a long time, should get the tallies to begin reviewing,” Cruz said.

“There’s balance within the table; let’s not pretend that the officer must leave their table because, how much time would it take? We see that these are not isolated cases anymore.

There are many more.”

He went on to say that as each vote counting table has representation from every political party and an infraction tally where every electoral officer can sign and authorize an alleged infraction, these can be handed to every electoral commissioner later in the day to prevent delaying the general vote count and continue investigations.

As for the San Juan general vote count, Cruz said it was expected to conclude today or Wednesday.

And regarding a double shift to hasten the general vote count, Cruz said “it was an idea that the SEC Chairman [Francisco Rosado Colomer] brought up during a meeting,” but there hasn’t been an official agreement.

Nonetheless, New Progressive Party Electoral Commissioner Héctor Joaquín Sánchez said the possibility of a double shift had not been discarded. However, he said, “we don’t want to obligate any party that, due to a double shift through a court order, [might withdraw] their representation.”

“We want them to have time to plan and conduct double shifts,” he said, noting to the press that a determination that was voted for during a meeting was to place four ballot containers at each vote count table.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

5

PDP lawmakers urge House speaker to start transition

By THE STAR STAFF

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opular Democratic Party (PDP) Reps. Ángel Matos García, Kebin Maldonado, and Juan José Santiago said Monday that the reason why the New Progressive Party (NPP) does not want to initiate the transition process in the island House of Representatives is because they are trying to buy time, since they do not want to accept that House Speaker Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Núñez lost his seat.

“They no longer know what else to do to prevent Luquillo’s three missing [ballot] cases from being counted,” Matos García said in a statement. “Johnny Méndez knows that he lost the election and that is the reason why he accepted his defeat the very night of the election event. The country is tired of lies and tricks to try to confuse public opinion.”

Although the State Elections Commission is conducting the scrutiny of votes, the PDP says it has a majority in the Legislature.

“Our call to Johnny Méndez is to have a graceful exit by accepting his defeat just as he did on Election Night, and facilitating an orderly transition process to begin,” Matos Garcia said.

“Puerto Ricans need stability, and certainly the attitude assumed by Méndez and some NPP legislators leaves much to be desired.

Likewise, Kebin Maldonado said Article 8 of Administrative Order 2016-02 reads: “the delegation of the

political party with the largest number of elected representatives in the House will appoint an Incoming Transition Committee. Once this committee is constituted, the current House Speaker will be notified, and he will summon the first meeting within the next five days

from the written notification, indicating such to the members of the Incoming Transition Committee.”

“The Administrative Order is more than clear,” Maldonado said. “To this end, we are asking Johnny Méndez not to delay this process any longer, and to allow the Outgoing Transition Committee to contact the Incoming Committee.”

Santiago, meanwhile, said NPP Rep. José “Memo” González is not behaving according to the seat he occupies.

“Puerto Rico endorsed with its vote the demand for transparency …” Santiago said. “Memo González must understand that the country rejected the old styles of crassly wanting to take over the democratic processes. We must respect the will of the people and be responsible with the position we occupy, enforcing the law. The transition must begin now.”

“Memo González should not lend himself to political games that put democracy at risk,” he added. “Instead of lending himself to play Johnny Méndez’s game, he should dedicate himself to convincing [Méndez] to come out of that state of denial and accept his defeat, for the good of the country.”

Court orders Aguadilla mayor to start transition process

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

A

guadilla Superior Court Judge Miguel Trabal Cuevas on Monday accepted a mandamus filed by Aguadilla mayor-elect Julio Roldán and ordered outgoing Mayor Yanitsia Irizarry Méndez to immediately name her outgoing transition committee and for transition meetings to begin this week.

In the written judgment, Judge Trabal Cuevas establishes that “both transition committees will begin their meetings on December 4 at 1 p.m.” He added that “regardless of the recount, the Transition Committee has to be activated, constituted, and the [meetings] begun on both sides.”

“We are satisfied with the determination of the honorable court,” said Roldán, the Popular Democratic Party candidate who on Nov. 3 obtained 8,760 votes

to Irizarry’s 8,685 votes (the difference of just 75 votes required a recount). “It is a shame for the people of Aguadilla that the outgoing mayor is tied to her chair and to power and that she has to wait for a judge to order her to begin the work so that she complies with the law. I also urge the attorney Irizarry that we begin an orderly and complete transition process so that we, as the incoming administration, can know all the details of the municipal government.”

“As of November 18, we are ready to begin the transition process with our duly constituted committee,” Roldán added. “As an incoming administration and complying with the Municipal Code of Puerto Rico, we have followed the steps so that the transition process of the municipalities will begin 15 days after the general elections are held, as established by law. So we will be there on December 4 in the mayor’s office to comply with the law and the order of the Superior Court.”

Aguadilla outgoing Mayor Yanitsia Irizarry Méndez

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Arecibo begins transition hearings

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T Arecibo mayor Carlos Molina

he Municipality of Arecibo announced Monday the start of public transition hearings through “an orderly and transparent procedure” commissioned by the mayor, Carlos Molina Rodríguez, which will be held from the mayor’s office.

“We continue to provide visibility to this process in favor of providing our people with clarity and transparency so that the transition is a reliable and effective one,” the mayor said. “The planning for the execution of these hearings has been orderly and we hope it will be the same until the last day.”

Molina Rodríguez said the hearings will be held from the Municipal Legislature Hall starting at 1 p.m. and that, from their opening day, will address issues of public interest through a work agenda agreed to by both the incoming and outgoing transition committees.

Ponce, Aguadilla airports receive health accreditation

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

M

ercedita de Ponce and Rafael Hernández de Aguadilla international airports received accreditation certificates from the International Airports Council (IAC) after completing the Airport Health Accreditation Program, Ports Authority Executive Director Joel A. Pizá Batiz announced Monday.

The Ports chief said the authority became a member of the IAC last month, one of the leading global organizations of the world’s airport authorities, and immediately began working on the IAC’s Airport Health Accreditation (AHA) Program to have both airports accredited.

The AHA accreditation, valid for the next 12 months, is designed to help assure the traveling public that the facilities at the two airports remain safe and that precautions are being taken to reduce any risks to their health.

“We are very satisfied that these two airports of ours have obtained ICA AHA accreditation,” Pizá Batiz said in a written statement. “It provides additional certainty, both to the passengers and to the personnel who work there, that we are complying with the highest standards and adopting the best practices in the industry.”

Luis Felipe de Oliveira, CEO of IAC World, extended his congratulations to Pizá Batiz and his team at the Mercedita and Rafael Hernández airports after both facilities successfully completed the AHA Program.

“After reviewing the evidence presented through the organization’s evaluation process, its airports have shown that they are providing a safe airport experience for all travelers, and that they are in line with the recommended health measures established in the IAC guidelines for restart and recovery of the aviation business, and in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s recommendations for the recovery of aviation, and with the best practices of the industry,” de Oliveira said.

Both international airports are governed by a strict protocol for screening and monitoring against COVID-19 for passengers and workers, including the use of modern infrared cameras to detect possible carriers of the virus.

“These accreditations reaffirm the commitment of governor Wanda Vázquez Garced and the Puerto Rico Port Authority to continue ensuring the health and best interests of the users of our airport facilities, and to continue promoting the economic development of Puerto Rico through them,” Pizá Batiz said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

7

More restrictions as the COVID-19 surge continues

By JILL COWAN

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hatever brief respite from the unending parade of disheartening news we might have been hoping for this long weekend was cut short Friday when Los Angeles County officials announced the most restrictive lockdown in California, banning all gatherings, public and private.

That means that even before 10 p.m., when the state’s limited curfew goes into effect, residents of the county, far and away California’s most populous, are not allowed to gather with anyone outside their households, starting Monday. The new order will be in effect through Dec. 20.

It is not quite as severe as the statewide stay-at-home order in March, nor was it much of a surprise.

Schools and day cares that have been allowed to reopen can stay open unless they have outbreaks. Religious services and protests can still take place, and stores can continue to operate at limited capacity.

And the county’s most contested move, to shut down outdoor dining, had already taken place.

But the fact that Los Angeles officials set what sounded like a high threshold for additional restrictions — an average of 4,500 new cases per day in the county over five days — and the virus quickly rolled past it, underscores the sense that we’re hurtling down a hill,

even though officials have pulled the emergency brake.

A week ago, California reported 17,694 new cases, well more than any other state had done before, according to The New York Times’ database.

Leaders have warned repeatedly that the holidays were on track to be dangerous.

But since we learned more about how the virus spreads, the tidal wave we are now facing here in California felt somehow less inevitable. Businesses have adapted to operate outdoors and, in many cases across the state, have been doing so for months.

All of this has made this surge more puzzling and has contributed to greater pushback against the particulars of restrictions, especially in Los Angeles, where restaurateurs and some officials have said closing outdoor dining unfairly punishes businesses that have taken precautions.

More broadly, the state’s curfew for counties in the most restrictive purple reopening tier has drawn criticism and some local law enforcement officials have said they will not enforce it, as KQED reported — although that was also the case with past orders.

Nevertheless, as The Los Angeles Times explained, the prevalence of COVID-19 in communities means that activities that had been deemed safer, such as dining or shopping, are now more dangerous than ever.

According to a county model, about 1 in 145 Angelenos

A shopper waiting in line to enter a store early morning on Black Friday at the Citadel Outlets in Commerce. are currently infectious with COVID-19.

While Los Angeles, by sheer numbers, is a site of major concern, as hospitals continue to fill, other counties across the state are following suit in tightening restrictions.

San Francisco and San Mateo counties have been moved into the purple tier, and Santa Clara County, which was already in the purple tier, added restrictions, including stricter capacity limits for stores and a temporary ban on contact sports, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Party with nearly 400 people is shut down in Manhattan

By MIHIR ZAVERI

S

heriff’s deputies arrived at a building in midtown Manhattan just before 3 a.m. Saturday and found almost 400 people drinking and partying inside. Few were wearing face masks.

Deputies shut the party down and arrested four people.

The episode reflected the way that, despite the onset of a second wave of the coronavirus, people are continuing to gather at large events in New York City in violation of public health safeguards.

Sheriff Joseph Fucito said Sunday that his office has responded to similar events around twice every weekend for the last several months.

The frequency has not changed, he said, despite increasingly dire warnings from city officials about gathering indoors during the Thanksgiving weekend and the winter holidays.

Officials are having difficulty changing people’s behavior as the city enters a precarious phase of the pandemic.

The seven-day average test positivity rate in New York City was 3.9%, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday, up from less than 2% at the beginning of the month. About 720 people were hospitalized in the last seven days, according to city data, while the average for the last four weeks was 555.

Coronavirus case counts are breaking records nationwide. Federal health officials on Sunday forecast another spike in infections after Thanksgiving that could lead to more deaths

and more stress on hospitals. Cold weather in the months ahead will continue to force people indoors and increase the risk of transmission.

Fucito declined to say how deputies found out about the party Saturday. But they arrived at the building at 202 W. 36th St. — about two blocks north of Pennsylvania Station — around 2:45 a.m. and found more than 393 people inside.

People had paid to attend the party and for alcohol service, but the organizers did not have a liquor license or permit to serve alcohol, Fucito said. Photos shared by the Sheriff’s Office show a room lit by a black light, with dozens of bottles of tequila, whiskey and vodka lining one counter.

Four people — the DJ and three others who worked at the party — were charged with violating rules meant to protect against the spread of the coronavirus. Efforts to reach them Sunday were unsuccessful.

The party was just the latest in a string of large events that the Sheriff’s Office has responded to.

On Halloween weekend, deputies broke up two parties where almost 1,000 people were dancing and drinking inside warehouses. In mid-November, deputies shut down an unlicensed fight club, known as “Rumble in the Bronx,” which drew 200 people. Many of those crowding inside were drinking, smoking hookah and not wearing masks, authorities said.

Last weekend, deputies broke up a sex club party in

Queens and an illegal party in Manhattan. And on Thanksgiving Day itself, deputies shut down an illegal bottle club in Queens with almost 80 people.

While the constant partying and violation of coronavirus rules seem at odds with the worsening situation in New York City, there are several explanations for why people would continue to embrace risky behavior, said Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, who has written about how to align behavior with public health directives during the pandemic.

He said some people may increasingly be “suffering fatigue from lack of social interaction,” and younger people who tend to frequent parties may believe they are not at risk for severe health consequences.

He said misinformation may also dilute public officials’ warnings and lead people to believe the risks are not severe.

With the Trump administration underplaying the risk of the virus, warnings get muddied, he said.

Meanwhile, the relative lack of financial support for struggling small businesses could drive people to search for other ways to make money, including through parties and other events.

“It manifests in all these little problems,” he said. “They all kind of pop up, and it’s like that game where you’ve got to smash the groundhog that pops up; you smash one down, and another one pops up.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Teaching in the pandemic: ‘This is not sustainable’

Teacher burnout could erode instructional quality, stymie working parents and hinder reopening of the economy.

By NATASHA SINGER

A

t Farmington Central Junior High in rural Illinois, classes still start at 8 a.m. But that’s about the only part of the school day that has not changed for Caitlyn Clayton, an eighth-grade English teacher tirelessly toggling between inperson and remote students.

At the start of the school day, Clayton stands in front of the classroom, reminding her students to properly pull their masks over their noses. Then she delves into a writing lesson, all the while scanning the room for possible virus threats. She stops students from sharing supplies. She keeps her distance when answering their questions. She disinfects the desks between classes.

Then in the afternoon, just as her inperson students head home, Clayton begins her second day: remote teaching. Sitting in her classroom, she checks in one-on-one via video with eighth graders who have opted for distance learning. To make sure they are not missing out, she spends hours more recording instructional videos that replicate her in-person classroom lessons.

“The days where it’s 13-plus hours at school, you’re just exhausted, hoping to make it to the car at night,” Clayton said, noting that many of her colleagues feel similarly depleted. “We’re seeing an

extreme level of teacher burnout.”

All this fall, as vehement debates have raged over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, teachers have been at the center — often vilified for challenging it, sometimes warmly praised for trying to make it work. But the debate has often missed just how thoroughly the coronavirus has upended learning in the country’s 130,000 schools, and glossed over how emotionally and physically draining pandemic teaching has become for the educators themselves.

In more than a dozen interviews, educators described the immense challenges, and exhaustion, they have faced trying to provide normal schooling for students in pandemic conditions that are anything but normal. Some recounted whiplash experiences of having their schools abruptly open and close, sometimes more than once, because of virus risks or quarantine-driven staff shortages, requiring them to repeatedly switch back and forth between in-person and online teaching.

Others described the stress of having to lead back-to-back group video lessons for remote learners, even as they continued to teach students in person in their classrooms.

Some educators said their workloads had doubled.

“I have NEVER been this exhausted,”

Sarah Gross, a veteran high school English teacher in New Jersey who is doing hybrid teaching this fall, said in a recent Twitter thread. She added, “This is not sustainable.”

Many teachers said they had also become impromptu social workers for their students, directing them to food banks, acting as grief counselors for those who had family members die of COVID-19, and helping pupils work through their feelings of anxiety, depression and isolation. Often, the teachers said, their concern for their students came at a cost to themselves.

“Teachers are not OK right now,” said Evin Shinn, a literacy coach at a public middle school in Seattle, noting that many teachers were putting students’ pandemic needs above their own well-being. “We have to be building in more spaces for mental health.”

Experts and teachers unions are warning of a looming burnout crisis among educators that could lead to a wave of retirements, undermining the fitful effort to resume normal public schooling. In a recent survey by the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, 28% of educators said the coronavirus had made them more likely to leave teaching or retire early.

That weariness spanned generations.

Among the poll respondents, 55% of veteran teachers with more than 30 years of experience said they were now considering leaving the profession. So did 20% of teachers with less than 10 years’ experience.

“If we keep this up, you’re going to lose an entire generation of not only students but also teachers,” said Shea Martin, an education scholar and facilitator who works with public schools on issues of equity and justice.

A pandemic teacher exodus is not hypothetical. In Minnesota, the number of teachers applying for retirement benefits increased by 35% this August and September compared with the same period in 2019. In Pennsylvania, the increase in retirement-benefit applications among school employees, including administrators and bus drivers, was even higher — 60% over the same time period.

In a survey in Indiana this fall, 72% of school districts said the pandemic had worsened school staffing problems.

“We’ve seen teachers start the school year and then back out because of the workload, or because of the bouncing back and forth” with school openings and closings, said Terry McDaniel, a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University in Terre Haute who led the survey.

To express their concerns, unnamed educators have turned to “An Anonymous Teacher Speaks,” a discussion site started last month by Martin. It has quickly become a collective cry for help, with demoralized teachers saying they felt “defeated,” “overloaded,” “terrified,” “ignored and frustrated” and on the brink of quitting. A few even disclosed having suicidal thoughts.

“I work until midnight each night trying to lock and load all my links, lessons, etc. I never get ahead,” one anonymous educator wrote. “Emails, endless email.

Parents blaming me because their kids chose to stay in bed, on phones, on video games instead of doing work.”

Teachers singled out hybrid programs requiring them to instruct in-person and remote students simultaneously as being particularly taxing.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, Gross, a high school English teacher in Lincroft, New Jersey, teaches cohorts of ninth and 12th graders in her classroom while at the same time instructing other students who are learning from home by video. On Thursdays and Fridays, the second group comes to school while the first group tunes in from home.

She also teaches a third group of students who never come to school because they are doing remote-only learning this fall.

“You’re trying to be two people at once, trying to help the students who are online and the students who are in front of you,” Gross said, adding that the remote students often can’t hear their peers in the classroom and vice versa.

All the while, she tries to keep one eye on the classroom, making sure her in-person students are wearing masks and maintaining social distance, and the other eye online where remote students often need her help troubleshooting computer and connectivity problems.

“It’s not sustainable,” Gross said.

“That’s the hardest thing to come to grips with for myself and my colleagues.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

9

Most Republicans say they doubt the election. How many really mean it?

By EMILY BADGER

S

ince the election, surveys have consistently found that about 70% to 80% of Republicans don’t buy the results.

They don’t agree that Joe Biden won fair and square. They say the election was rigged. And they say enough fraud occurred to tip the outcome.

Those numbers sound alarmingly high, and they imply that the overwhelming majority of people in one political party in America doubt the legitimacy of a presidential election. But the reality is more complicated, political scientists say. Research has shown that the answers that partisans (on the left as well as on the right) give to political questions often reflect not what they know as fact, but what they wish were true. Or what they think they should say.

It is incredibly hard to separate sincere belief from wishful thinking from what political scientists call partisan cheerleading.

But on this topic especially, the distinctions matter a lot. Are Republican voters merely expressing support for the president by standing by his claims of fraud — in effectively the same way Republicans in Congress have — or have they accepted widespread fraud as true? Do these surveys suggest a real erosion in faith in American elections, or something more familiar, and temporary?

“It’s one thing to think that you don’t trust the guys in Washington because they’re not your party,” said Lonna Atkeson, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico. “But it’s a whole other thing if you think, ‘Well, gee, they didn’t even get there legitimately.’”

She suggested, however, that these results be taken with something between alarm and skepticism.

Tracking surveys, which ask people the same questions over time on topics like the direction of the country or the economy, showed a lot of Republicans responding immediately after the election as if they believed the president had lost. Among Republicans, consumer confidence swiftly dropped, as did the share saying they thought the country was headed in the right direction.

Those results, which mirror past elections, suggest many Republicans knew Biden would become president. But they don’t tell us much about whether Republicans believe he won fairly.

In one survey released Monday by YouGov and Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who monitor the state of American democracy, 87% of Republicans accurately said that news media decision desks had declared Biden the winner of the election. That rules out the possibility that many Republicans simply aren’t aware of that fact.

Still, only about 20% of Republicans said they considered a Biden victory the “true result.” And 49% said they expected Trump to be inaugurated Jan. 20 — a belief that’s “unreasonably optimistic” at this point, said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist who is part of the research group. Digging deeper, he added, only about half of the group expecting Trump to be inaugurated also said he was the true winner. The other Republicans expressed instead some uncertainty about the outcome.

“There’s a set of people who are true believers that Donald Trump won the election and is going to be inaugurated, but that’s a relatively small set,” he said. “There’s also a small set of people

Supporters of President Trump protesting in Lansing, Mich., last week. Will their mistrust last? who acknowledge Joe Biden won, but not nearly as many as you would hope.

“And there’s a lot of people who are at different degrees of acceptance in between.”

In that group, political scientists say there are also people who give the equivalent of the party line answer to survey takers, regardless of their real beliefs.

“The evidence is strong that a number of people out there, even if they know the truth, will give a cheerleading answer,” said Seth Hill, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. Part of the president’s base appears eager to stick it to the establishment, he said. If those voters interpret surveys about the election’s legitimacy as part of that establishment, he said, “it’s quite possible they will use this as another vehicle to express that sentiment.”

For other voters, what they sincerely believe and what they want to be true may well be the same thing. And politics can be inseparable from that reasoning.

Research has shown that supporters of the winning candidate in an election consistently have more faith that the election was fair than supporters of the losing candidate do. This pattern is true of both Democrats and Republicans. And when the parties’ fortunes flip in subsequent elections, people’s answers flip, too.

One recent experiment found that among Trump’s supporters, people shown Twitter messages by the president attacking democratic norms lost confidence in elections.

In another recent survey experiment conducted by Brian Schaffner, Alexandra Haver and Brendan Hartnett at Tufts, suppor-

ters of Trump were asked shortly before Election Day how they would want him to respond if he lost, depending on the degree of the loss: if they would want him to concede and commit to a peaceful transfer or power, or resist the results and use any means to remain in office.

About 40% wanted him to take the latter option if he lost in the Electoral College and lost the national popular vote by only a percentage point or two. But roughly the same share wanted the president to contest the election even if he lost the popular vote by 10 to 12 points. That suggests, Schaffner said, that a significant share of the president’s supporters don’t necessarily believe the election was fraudulent. Rather, they were prepared to support the president’s contesting of the election no matter what.

Other evidence shows that Republicans actually felt fairly good about how their votes were handled this year. In a large Pew survey, 72% of Trump voters said they were confident their vote was accurately counted. And 93% said voting was easy for them. That paints a different picture of how these voters view the electoral process that played out closest to them, even as many said elections this year weren’t run well nationally.

Voters have often said in surveys that they have more confidence in elections in their community or state than they do in voting across the country. That may be a useful insight for this moment, too: It means that the president’s sweeping claims about election fraud will not necessarily dissuade Republicans in Georgia in January. They probably have more faith in their local election workers and precinct offices than these surveys suggest they have for the country.

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Biden fractures foot playing with his dog, putting him in a boot

By ANNIE KARNI

P

resident-elect Joe Biden twisted his ankle playing with one of his dogs over the holiday weekend, an injury that his doctor said Sunday resulted in hairline fractures in his foot that would most likely require him to wear a walking boot for several weeks.

Although initial X-rays showed no obvious fracture, a “follow-up CT scan confirmed hairline (small) fractures of President-elect Biden’s lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones, which are in the midfoot,” Dr. Kevin O’Connor, director of executive medicine at GW Medical Faculty Associates, said in a statement distributed by Biden’s office.

Biden visited an orthopedic specialist in Newark, Delaware, on Sunday afternoon for just over two hours, leaving just before 6:30 p.m. and going to an imaging center for a short time for the additional CT. A Biden spokesperson said the president-elect had scheduled the follow-up Sunday to avoid disrupting his schedule Monday. A van was maneuvered to block reporters and photo-

graphers from seeing Biden as he entered the doctor’s office.

Biden, 78, is already operating on a crunched transition time frame, after the head of the General Services Administration did not formally acknowledge the presidential election results for weeks after Election Day, temporarily depriving Biden of access to federal resources and preventing his advisers from beginning coordination with Trump administration officials.

President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede to Biden, reposted on Twitter an NBC News video of Biden leaving the doctor’s office Sunday, and added, “Get well soon!”

Biden slipped and injured himself Saturday while playing with Major, a German shepherd the Bidens had fostered that they then adopted in 2018. They have another German shepherd, Champ, and have announced plans to get a cat when they move into the White House next year.

Delaware Orthopaedic Specialists in Newark, Del., where President-elect Joe BiTrump had no pet during his four years den visited after twisting his ankle while playing with his dogs, Nov. 29, 2020. in the White House.

California governor blocks release of Manson follower Leslie Van Houten

By NEIL VIGDOR

A

Charles Manson follower who is serving a life sentence for her role in the grisly double murder of a Los Angeles couple more than 50 years ago has lost her latest bid at freedom after California’s governor overrode a parole board’s decision granting her release.

The convicted murderer, Leslie Van Houten, was 19 when she and the other members of the so-called Manson family broke into the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca and stabbed them dozens of times on Aug. 10, 1969.

The killing of the LaBiancas took place one night after five people were murdered at the Benedict Canyon home of movie director Roman Polanski — including his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate. The bloodshed, carried out under Manson’s direction, terrorized Los Angeles and beyond.

Van Houten, 71, qualified in July for release from a state prison, but California law gives the governor final say over whether an inmate is suitable for parole.

And on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, overrode the parole board’s decision, characterizing Van Houten as a “danger” in a release review document.

“Ms. Van Houten’s explanation of what allowed her to be vulnerable to Mr. Manson’s influence remains unsatisfying,” Newsom said. “She described herself at the time of her involvement in the Manson family as a ‘very weak person that took advantage of someone that wanted to take control of my life, and I handed it over.’”

It is the second time that Newsom has blocked Van Houten’s parole and the fourth time that a governor has done so.

Rich Pfeiffer, a lawyer for Van Houten, said in an interview Sunday that he planned to appeal the governor’s decision in Superior Court in Los Angeles and that the case would likely end up in an appellate court.

“There’s no evidence supporting the governor’s reversal,” Pfeiffer said.

Pfeiffer said that the stigma of being associated with Manson, who was one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century, had influenced Newsom. Manson, who spent

most of his life behind bars, died in 2017 at 83.

“Plenty of murderers have gotten out of prison and done just fine, but they’re not high-profile cases,” he said.

At a parole board hearing in 2002, Van Houten admitted that she had pinned down Rosemary LaBianca, a dress shop owner, while another Manson family member, Patricia Krenwinkel, stabbed her in the collar bone.

LaBianca unsuccessfully tried to free herself as she heard her husband, a supermarket executive, being stabbed in another room of the couple’s house in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles.

When the blade of the kitchen knife that was used on Rosemary LaBianca bent, another central figure in the attack, Charles D. Watson, stabbed her with a bayonet eight times, officials said. Van Houten told the parole board in 2002 that she had stabbed LaBianca in the abdomen 14 to 16 times.

The phrases “Death to Pigs,” “Rise” and other references to Helter Skelter, the name given by Manson to his apocalyptic race war, were scrawled in the victims’ blood on the walls and the refrigerator, investigators said.

At the crime scene, Van Houten wiped down surfaces for fingerprints, changed clothes and drank chocolate milk from the couple’s refrigerator, according to parole review records. She was arrested more than three months after the murders and has been imprisoned for about 50 years.

“I remain concerned by Ms. Van Houten’s characterization of her participation in this gruesome double murder, part of a series of crimes that rank among the most infamous and fear-inducing in California history,” Newsom said.

At the same time, Newsom said that Van Houten had an exemplary disciplinary record, had participated in self-help programming and had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees while incarcerated.

“When considered as a whole,” he said, “I find the evidence shows that she currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time.”

Pfeiffer, the lawyer for Van Houten, said Sunday night that his client could be exposed to the coronavirus if she remained in prison.

“At her age, she’s at a high risk,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

11

Biden expected to name top economic officials this week

By ALAN RAPPERPORT and JIM TANKERSLEY

P

resident-elect Joe Biden is expected to name top members of his economic team this week, including Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton labor economist, to run the Council of Economic Advisers, and Neera Tanden, the chief executive of the Center for American Progress, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, according to people familiar with the matter.

The announcement — which will include Biden’s decision to name Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, as Treasury secretary — would potentially culminate in several women in top economic roles, including the first Black woman to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. All three jobs require Senate confirmation.

With the picks, Biden is showcasing a commitment to diversity in his advisers and sending a clear message that economic policymaking in his administration will be shaped by liberal thinkers with a strong focus on worker empowerment as a tool for economic growth.

Two of Biden’s top economic aides during his presidential campaign, Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, will also be named to the Council of Economic Advisers, which is a three-member team that advises the president on economic policy. Both Boushey and Bernstein come from a liberal, labor-oriented school of economics that views rising inequality as a threat to the economy and emphasizes government efforts to support and empower workers.

In many ways, his team is unified by a commitment to running the economy hot — with strong growth and low unemployment — in order to drive up wages. And it is likely to signal an embrace of spending to help workers, businesses and local governments recover from the pandemic recession, regardless of the effect on the federal budget deficit.

“President Biden’s appointments show that he is quadrupling down on his commitment to working people and raising wages,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. “He has appointed four of the best labor market economists in the country to head the Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisers.”

In addition to those roles, Biden is expected to name Adewale Adeyemo, a senior international economic adviser in the Obama administration, as deputy Treasury secretary.

Biden has also selected Brian Deese, a former Obama economic aide who helped lead that administration’s efforts to bail out the American automotive industry, to lead the National Economic Council, according to three people with knowledge of the selection.

Deese, 42, is not an academic economist but a veteran of economic policymaking, having served as the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget and the deputy director of the Economic Council under Obama. He was also a special adviser on climate change to Obama, a role that could signal Biden’s commitment to fashioning an

President-elect Joe Biden delivers a holiday address in Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020, the day before Thanksgiving. President-elect Biden is expected to nominate Neera Tanden, a divisive figure within the Democratic Party, to lead the budget office, setting up a potential confirmation fight. infrastructure bill for his legislative agenda that heavily features spending on clean energy initiatives.

Biden on Sunday announced an all-female White House communications staff, with Jennifer Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration, in the most visible role as White House press secretary.

Kate Bedingfield, 39, who served as a deputy campaign manager for Biden, will serve as the White House communications director. Karine Jean Pierre, who previously served as the chief public affairs officer for MoveOn.org, will be the principal deputy press secretary.

Pili Tobar, a former immigrant advocate with the group America’s Voice, will serve as the deputy White House communications director.

Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Biden on the campaign, will serve as the senior adviser and chief spokeswoman for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Ashley Etienne, a former senior adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will serve as the communications director for Harris.

The appointments indicate Biden’s plan to include racial, gender and ideological diversity in top roles, fulfilling a campaign pledge to ensure that a broad swath of America is represented in policymaking decisions.

But they could fall short of hopes within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has been frustrated that their views are not being sufficiently represented in early personnel decisions. In particular, the decision to select Tanden, a divisive and partisan figure in the Democratic Party, could culminate in an

intraparty fight, as well as a confirmation battle.

Republicans, who are expected to retain control of the Senate, are unlikely to easily pass Tanden, an Indian American who advised Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Donald Trump.

She also faces a challenge from Senate Democrats given her role in the 2016 election: Many of those who worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran against Clinton, remain convinced that Tanden was part of a group of Democrats working behind the scenes to scuttle his nomination.

Sanders, who ran against — and ultimately endorsed — Biden, is the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, which vets the director of the Office of Management and Budget, putting the fate of Tanden’s nomination under his watch.

Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, referred to Tanden on Twitter on Sunday as a “sacrifice to the confirmation gods,” suggesting that her downfall would sate Republican anger toward Biden’s presidency and allow other nominees to more easily win confirmation.

Drew Brandewie, a spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said on Twitter on Sunday evening that Tanden “stands zero chance of being confirmed.”

But Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist in Georgia and a rising star in the Democratic Party, praised Tanden’s nomination, saying on Twitter that she was “very proud” of her friend.

The selection of Tanden, who was involved in the development of the Affordable Care Act as an adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration, is likely to resurface questions about the funding of the Center for American Progress. The New York Times reported last year that from 2016 through 2018, the center accepted nearly $2.5 million from the United Arab Emirates to fund its National Security and International Policy initiative.

In addition, hacked emails from Tanden that were released through WikiLeaks in 2016 could also provide additional fodder for her critics.

Biden’s other picks are most likely less contentious.

Rouse, a labor economist, worked on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011 and at the White House’s National Economic Council during the Clinton administration in the late 1990s.

Bernstein was Biden’s first chief economist when he was vice president and has written extensively on the power of low unemployment and strong economic growth to bolster workers and wages. Boushey runs the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a liberal think tank focused on inequality, and was a top policy adviser to Clinton in 2016.

She has focused much of her research and writing on government initiatives meant to increase women’s participation in the labor force, such as paid leave programs.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Nike and Coca-Cola lobby against Xinjiang forced labor bill

By ANA SWANSON

N

ike and Coca-Cola are among the major companies and business groups lobbying Congress to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, according to congressional staff members and other people familiar with the matter, as well as lobbying records that show vast spending on the legislation.

The bill, which would prohibit broad categories of certain goods made by persecuted Muslim minorities in an effort to crack down on human rights abuses, has gained bipartisan support, passing the House in September by a margin of 406-3.

Congressional aides say it has the backing to pass the Senate and could be signed into law by either the Trump administration or the incoming Biden administration.

But the legislation, called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has become the target of multinational companies including Apple, whose supply chains touch the far western Xinjiang region, as well as of business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lobbyists have fought to water down some of its provisions, arguing that while they strongly condemn forced labor and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act’s ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China.

Xinjiang produces vast amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes and polysilicon, and supplies workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories.

Human rights groups and news reports have linked many multinational companies to suppliers there, including tying CocaCola to sugar sourced from Xinjiang, and documenting Uighur workers in a factory in Qingdao that makes Nike shoes.

In a report issued in March, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, listed Nike and Coca-Cola as companies suspected of ties to forced labor in Xinjiang, alongside Adidas, Calvin Klein, Campbell Soup Co., Costco, H&M, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger and others.

In a statement, Coca-Cola said that it “strictly prohibits any type of forced labor in our supply chain” and uses third-party auditors to closely monitor its suppliers.

It also said that the COFCO Tunhe facility

Demonstrators rallying last month in support of the measure in Washington. Lobbyists have argued that the act’s requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China. in Xinjiang, which supplies sugar to a local bottling facility and had been linked to allegations of forced labor by The Wall Street Journal and Chinese-language news media, “successfully completed an audit in 2019.”

Greg Rossiter, the director of global communications at Nike, said the company “did not lobby against” the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act but instead had “constructive discussions” with congressional staff aides aimed at eliminating forced labor and protecting human rights.

Asked about the allegations of forced labor, Nike referred to a statement in March in which it said that it did not source products from Xinjiang and that it had confirmed that its suppliers were not using textiles or yarn from the region.

Nike said that the Qingdao factory had stopped hiring new workers from Xinjiang in 2019, and that an independent audit confirmed there were no longer employees from there at the facility. (According to a report published in March by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that cited state media, the factory employed around 800 Uighur workers at the end of 2019 and produced more than 7 million pairs of shoes for Nike each year.)

China’s vast campaign of suppressing and forcibly assimilating Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang has attracted the

scorn of politicians and consumers around the world.

But for many companies, fully investigating and eliminating any potential ties to forced labor there has been difficult, given the opacity of Chinese supply chains and the limited access of auditors to a region where the Chinese government tightly restricts people’s movements.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require companies sending goods to the United States to scrutinize those supply chains, or perhaps abandon Chinese suppliers altogether. It would impose high standards, barring imports of goods made “in whole or in part” in Xinjiang unless companies prove to customs officials that their products were not made with forced labor.

The bill also targets so-called poverty alleviation and pairing programs that ship Muslims from impoverished areas to work in factories elsewhere, which human rights groups say are often coercive. Companies would be required to disclose information on their ties to Xinjiang to the Securities Exchange Commission.

Companies and groups lobbying on the bill have been pushing for various revisions, including easing disclosure requirements, people familiar with the conversations said.

Apple, which has extensive business

ties to China, has also lobbied to limit some provisions of the bill, said two congressional staff members and another person familiar with the matter.

Disclosure forms show that Apple paid Fierce Government Relations, a firm led by former staff aides to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and President George W. Bush, $90,000 to lobby on issues including Xinjiang-related legislation in the third quarter. Apple’s lobbying was previously reported by The Washington Post.

Apple also paid outside firms this year to lobby on another bill, the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act of 2020.

Apple disputed the claim that it had tried to weaken the legislation, saying it supported efforts to strengthen U.S. regulations and believes that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act should become law.

According to a document viewed

by The New York Times, Apple’s suggested edits to the bill included extending some deadlines for compliance, releasing certain information about supply chains to congressional committees rather than to the public, and requiring Chinese entities to be “designated by the United States government” as helping to surveil or detain Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.

In its March report, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute identified Apple and Nike among 82 companies that potentially benefited, directly or indirectly, from abusive labor transfer programs tied to Xinjiang.

That report said that O-Film Technology, a contractor for Apple, Microsoft, Google and other companies, received at least 700 Uighur workers in a program that was expected to “gradually alter their ideology.”

It tied other Apple suppliers, including Foxconn Technology, to similar employment programs.

Apple said in a statement that it had the strongest supplier code of conduct in its industry and that it regularly assessed suppliers, including with surprise audits.

“Looking for the presence of forced labor is part of every supplier assessment we conduct and any violations of our policies carry immediate consequences, including business termination,” the statement said. “Earlier this year, we conducted a detailed investigation with our suppliers in China and found no evidence of forced labor on Apple production lines and we are continuing to monitor this closely.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street retreats, S&P 500 still set for best November ever

W

all Street’s main indexes dipped on Monday as investors paused following a sharp rally that has put the S&P 500 on course for its best November ever.

All of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors were trading lower, with energy leading losses, tracking a decline in crude prices.

[O/R] IHS Markit topped gains on the benchmark S&P 500 after data giant S&P Global agreed to buy the financial information provider in a $44 billion deal, which will be the biggest corporate acquisition of 2020.

Month-end rebalancing of portfolios played into Monday’s weakness, analysts said, as investors cash in on gains after a strong month marked by updates of COVID-19 vaccines making headway and hopes of a swift economic rebound next year.

A rotation into sectors deemed to provide better returns coming out of a recession such as energy, industrials and financials have driven gains of more than 11% for the S&P 500 and put the Dow is on track for its biggest monthly gain since 1987.

“It is a sell-off that is warranted after such strong gains.

We have a lot of macro news this week and the non-farm payrolls may not be too friendly to the market,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

After an explosion in infections and business restrictions this month that stalled the U.S. labor market recovery, focus will be on the monthly jobs report and the Fed’s Beige Book, as well as an address by Fed Chair Jerome Powell before the Senate Banking Committee.

(Graphic: S&P 500 set for its best November ever ) At 11:44 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 398.95 points, or 1.31% to 29,510.22 and the S&P 500 lost 33.92 points, or 0.93% to 3,604.57. The Nasdaq Composite lost 79.00 points, or 0.66% to 12,125.13 after hitting an alltime early in the session.

U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar on Monday said the first two vaccines against the novel coronavirus could be available to Americans before Christmas.

Moderna unveiled plans to apply for U.S. and European emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine after full results from a late-stage study showed it was 94.1% effective, sending its shares up 16%.

“Until the actual vaccination begins, I don’t know if news on the same company is going to move the needle,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager, Dakota Wealth, New York.

Macy’s Inc and Kohl’s Corp slipped between 2.5% and 5% as masked shoppers turned up in smaller numbers at major U.S. retailers on Black Friday as early online deals and concerns about a spike in COVID-19 cases dulled enthusiasm for mall trips.

Nikola Corp sank 23% as the company and General Motors announced a reworked deal on a fuel-cell partnership that eliminates an equity stake in the startup for the Detroit automaker and plans for building its electric pickup truck.

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14

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Hong Kong’s courts are still independent. Some want to rein them in.

Protesters in Hong Kong, Aug. 31, 2019. As the Chinese Communist Party extends its grip over Hong Kong, pro-Beijing forces are increasingly targeting the city’s independent judiciary, an institution that forms the backbone of this global center for commerce and capital.

By AUSTIN RAMZI

T

hey were arrested on one of the most violent days in Hong Kong last year, when protesters threw firebombs at the main government offices and set a barrier aflame outside police headquarters.

But last month, a judge quickly dismantled the prosecutors’ case against them.

In his ruling, District Judge Sham Siuman said that police officers had given unreliable testimony and that they appeared to have gone against their training by using batons to subdue one protester. He found all eight defendants not guilty, saying one had merely been asking officers to do their job when she used a loudspeaker to urge restraint.

The next day, a Chinese governmentowned newspaper in Hong Kong splashed a photo of the judge, wearing his court wig and robes, on its front page beside images of protesters and burning barriers. “Strange opinion issued by the court,” the headline read. The judge, it continued, says the protesters “were actually the ones wronged.”

As the Chinese Communist Party extends its grip over Hong Kong, pro-Beijing forces are increasingly targeting the city’s

independent judiciary, an institution that forms the backbone of this global center for commerce and capital.

State newspapers have railed for months against “yellow judges” seen as lenient toward protesters. (The color yellow is a symbol of the protest movement.)

Party officials have called for an overhaul of the courts to rein in judges’ autonomy.

The city’s leadership has exerted more influence over the selection of judges.

“It would be naive for anyone to think they will leave the judiciary alone.

Why would they?” said Dennis Kwok, who represented Hong Kong’s legal sector in the local legislature until he was removed from office this month. “They want to get their hands on everything.”

The far-reaching national security law that Beijing passed this summer gives the state even more authority over the Hong Kong judiciary. China’s legislature also bypassed the local courts to force the ouster of four lawmakers in November, exercising new powers that some lawyers and legal scholars worry could be turned against judges.

The Hong Kong judiciary, with its British-born, 170-year-old tradition of

robes, wigs and independence, is at the heart of an existential fight over the region’s future.

Hong Kong’s courts firmly divide the city from mainland China, where the opaque legal system is controlled by the Communist Party. The city’s underlying rule of law has helped attract droves of multinational corporations, bringing a flood of money that has made Hong Kong one of the world’s leading cities.

The judicial system’s integrity is fiercely defended in Hong Kong. The demonstrations that engulfed the city last year began over a proposal that many saw as potentially undermining the local courts, by allowing extraditions to mainland China.

In addition to imposing the national security law, Communist Party officials and state newspapers in the city are pushing for still more control. In a continuing series, Ta Kung Pao, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, has demanded that judges be patriotic. It has called for establishing a council to set the length of sentences, an external panel to handle complaints about judges and greater scrutiny over the judicial selection process.

“Beijing understands that this is an area that people will be very sensitive to and the international community will be watching over,” said Eric Cheung, a legal scholar at the University of Hong Kong.

“Beijing may not want to be seen as interfering with judicial independence, but I think it is very clear some Beijing officials are not happy with some decisions made by our judges.”

Even before the protests and the security law, Beijing had significant judicial oversight. When China reclaimed Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, the ultimate authority for interpretation of its laws moved to Beijing.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubberstamp legislature, has the power to interpret the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s local constitution. Several of its rulings have gone against the city’s pro-democracy camp. The committee’s interpretation of oath-taking in 2016 paved the way for the removal of six pro-democracy lawmakers who had protested during their swearing-in

ceremonies.

The security law has further constricted the city’s courts. It allows for some cases, such as those involving foreign forces or imminent threats, to be tried on the mainland. Under the law, Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, will designate judges for trials on national security charges.

Both the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy camps have found fault with the courts over protest cases — perhaps signaling that the judiciary remains an impartial institution, with a range of outlooks among judges.

A High Court judge was criticized by pro-Beijing figures for ruling this month that the riot police had not been carrying sufficient identification and that mechanisms for dealing with complaints of police mistreatment needed to be improved.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association had filed the suit over the police’s handling of reporters during protests.

Some judges have been condemned by the opposition for giving tough sentences to demonstrators or for appearing to sympathize with people who attacked protesters. After a district judge compared the protest movement to terrorism in an April ruling, Geoffrey Ma, chief justice of the Court of Final Appeal, barred him from future cases related to the political upheaval.

The criticism of judges, from both sides, has grown so frequent this year that Ma issued a lengthy defense of the judiciary’s independence.

“It is wrong to make serious accusations of bias or breach of fundamental principles merely based on a result of a case not to one’s liking,” he wrote in September. “The judiciary is not above criticism by any means, but any criticism must be solidly based and properly made. In particular, there must not be a politicization of the judiciary and its functions.”

So far, the protest cases that have been prosecuted do not indicate that the courts lean strongly to one side or another.

Of 10,148 people arrested in the protests, 2,325 have been prosecuted for crimes such as rioting, unlawful assembly or assault. As of the end of October, 372 had been convicted and 77 acquitted, according to Hong Kong police records.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

15

Afghan leader digs in on peace talks despite progress, officials say

By THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF

P

resident Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan has refused to let peace talks move forward even though the Taliban and government negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on the talks’ guiding principles, Afghan officials say, further stalling the process despite nearing an apparent breakthrough after months of effort.

The Taliban exposed those fault lines Saturday when the insurgent group announced on social media that both sides had agreed to the nearly two dozen points under discussion this month — a framework for how talks would go forward, including points of protocol and how issues would be presented.

But some government officials immediately pushed back on that claim, insisting that details still needed to be worked out and that no agreement had been reached. They say the Taliban were pressured by Western officials to signal a breakthrough.

Three Afghan officials with knowledge of the talks said that Ghani took exception to at least one detail, insisting that the government side be referred to by its formal name, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, rather than by a more generic reference.

Aides to Ghani did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the issue on Sunday.

Such details have broken down efforts to negotiate before. The Taliban’s past insistence on being referred to as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the name of their government when they were in power — derailed an effort at talks in 2013 and was a sticking point in the talks between the United States and the Taliban that eventually led to a deal opening the way for a troop withdrawal, officials said.

That the Taliban were not sticking to that title in the guiding framework this month — agreeing to less specific references to the government and insurgent sides, and to other more central points of contention — was seen as an important accomplishment.

Now, the talks have been cast into further doubt by Ghani’s demand, officials and analysts said.

“At this stage the whole process has shifted to both sides’ convincing an international audience that the other side is disingenuous,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, an independent Afghan research analyst. “But long term, it could strengthen the hand of those within the Taliban that advocate for a military solution and view the current process as fruitless.”

American and Western diplomatic officials have not publicly responded to the breakdown. But people with direct knowledge of the talks in Doha, Qatar, have described diplomats as being exasperated with Ghani’s stance, and have suggested that the government negotiating team has been functionally split between loyalists to Ghani and other officials who are frustrated with him.

The introductory talks, which opened in hope and spectacle in Qatar in September, have unfolded over months

of brutal violence back in Afghanistan. The Taliban have intensified their offensives in crucial provinces, leading the government to accuse the insurgents of holding the talks hostage with their violence.

On Sunday, a stolen Humvee laden with explosives and driven by a suicide bomber rammed into an Afghan military base in Ghazni province, killing at least 30 security force members, government officials said.

There may be other crucial reasons that Ghani and his aides are digging in, as well.

If Ghani accepts the text that refuses to mention the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan “he opens the door for the nonrecognition of the Afghan republic,” said Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan presidential adviser. “President Ghani has resisted this concept from the start because there is no guarantee that he would remain president otherwise.”

Ghani may also see the delay as a calculated move in the hope that the incoming Biden administration might either change course on the continuing U.S. troop withdrawal or alter its approach to overseeing the peace negotiations. Under the Trump administration, Afghan officials complained that they were being heavily pressured by the Americans to accept painful compromises.

Both sides had agreed to a guiding document’s outline for the talks this month, according to the

officials with knowledge of the talks.

The agreement, mediated by members of the Qatari, Pakistani and U.S. governments, resolved two contentious issues, the officials said: Both sides were stuck on which school of Islamic thought to use for resolving disputes, and on whether the Feb. 29 U.S.-Taliban deal would be referenced as a basis for the continuing negotiations.

One of the hangups was over a reference to the Hanafi school of Islamic thought, one of the four major Sunni schools, which is also the foundation of the current Afghan Constitution, the officials said. Initially, the two sides were at odds on a formulation that does not alienate other sects, particularly Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. The officials said that dispute was resolved in favor of the Afghan government’s approach.

The second point was the inclusion of the Feb. 29 agreement between the Taliban and the U.S. government as a basis for the current talks, officials said. The February agreement prompted the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces in exchange for counterterrorism pledges from the Taliban and the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners.

The Afghan government balked at the inclusion of the February deal as a starting point, as the government was not a party to that agreement. To resolve the issue, the deal is mentioned, but the guidelines also included references to at least one other framing document, the officials said.

Delegates at the talks in Doha, Qatar, between the Afghan government and the Taliban in September. The two sides have been at an impasse for months.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

As Iran mourns nuclear scientist, officials vow to find his killers

A photograph released by the official website of the Iranian Defense Ministry showed soldiers carrying the flagdraped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran on Monday.

By ISABELLA KWAI

T

he Iranian defense minister vowed Monday to find and punish those responsible for the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, while another senior official offered an account of the attack radically different from initial reports in Iranian state news media.

“We chase the criminals to the end,” the defense minister, Brig. Gen. Amir Hatami, said at a ceremony mourning Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was shot and killed outside Tehran on Friday while traveling with his bodyguards.

Iranian state news outlets initially reported that gunmen had killed Fakhrizadeh in a roadside ambush after a truck explosion — and even interviewed a supposed witness. But speaking at the funeral Monday, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary

of the country’s Supreme National Security Council, said that Israel had carried out the attack using sophisticated “electronic devices.”

He did not elaborate, but the Fars news agency, an affiliate of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said the assassination was carried out with a machine gun operated by remote control.

The new version of events, which could not immediately be confirmed, seemed to represent a coordinated effort at damage control by the nation’s security apparatus after a public and official backlash after the embarrassingly public assassination of Fakhrizadeh, which Western intelligence officials have said was carried out by Israel.

At the funeral at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry, photographs and footage showed a procession carrying

Fakhrizadeh’s coffin, covered with flowers and draped with the Iranian flag.

It was the latest of expression of fury at the death of Fakhrizadeh, who for two decades was the brains behind what U.S. and Israeli intelligence described as Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program, although Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful uses only.

But Monday, Hatami said that the death of the scientist, whom he called a martyr, would make him a model for Iranian youth and only strengthen the nation’s resolve to forge ahead with his work.

Though he did not specify how, Hatami said the country would take to heart the commands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to punish the perpetrators and commanders behind the killing. Tehran is assembling an elite group to capture and prosecute the perpetrators, Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, said Monday. Members include the attorney general and select members of the armed forces and intelligence services.

“Once again, the evil hands of global arrogance and the Zionist mercenaries were stained with the blood of an Iranian son,” President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said Saturday, echoing phrases that Iranian officials often use in reference to Israel.

He added that the country would respond “in due course.”

After that threat, Israel on Saturday put its embassies around the world on high alert, Israeli N12 News reported.

The country’s Foreign Ministry said it would not comment on embassy security matters.

The calls for retribution heightened concerns that the situation could escalate. Over the weekend, Germany urged all sides to refrain from retaliatory actions in the last weeks of the Trump administration to preserve hopes for renewed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program once Joe Biden assumes the presidency.

Under the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers — a signature foreign policy milestone of the Obama administration — Tehran accepted strict restraints on its ability to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wanted. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed stringent sanctions on Iran.

Biden is expected to try to restore the accord, perhaps adding limits on Iran’s production and export of sophisticated weapons, but the killing threatens to complicate that effort.

Iran’s reaction over the next few weeks is likely to determine whether it will succeed, analysts say.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

17

4 Officers in France are charged over beating of a black man

By AURELIEN BREEDEN

F

our police officers have been charged over the beating of a Black music producer in Paris earlier in November, authorities in France said Monday, in a case that has shocked the country and forced the government to reckon with persistent accusations of police brutality and racism.

Graphic video posted on social media showed three officers pummeling the music producer, Michel Zecler, 41, with fists, feet and a baton Nov. 21 in the entrance to a recording studio in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, while another threw a tear-gas canister through the window. Zecler said that several officers had also used a racial slur against him.

The footage, which was taken from a security camera and obtained by Loopsider, a French digital news outlet, was at odds with the officers’ account of the events, and outrage in France was swift.

Authorities quickly suspended the officers and opened an investigation. President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on his Facebook page Friday that the images of the beating “bring shame upon us,” even as his government comes under growing pressure over a security bill that would restrict sharing images of police officers.

The four officers were placed under formal investigation late Sunday and charged with assault, including the use of a weapon, a French judicial official said Monday. Some were also charged with the use of racial insults, the official said.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about a continuing investigation, said that the three officers accused of beating Zecler had also been charged with forgery of official documents — over suspicions that the officers had lied in their police report about the events — while the officer accused of throwing the tear-gas canister had also been charged with damaging private property.

Authorities have not publicly identified the officers beyond their ages: 44, 35, 31 and 23. Two of them have been detained, while the others, including the one accused of throwing the teargas canister, were released under judicial control.

Rémy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor, said in a news conference Sunday evening that the officers initially said that they had been trying to stop Zecler because he was not wearing a mask, which is mandatory in France because of the coronavirus pandemic, and because he was emanating a “strong smell of cannabis.” The officers also said that Zecler had tried to avoid them by entering the studio, that he had dragged the officers in with him and that he had been violent.

Heitz said that the police later found barely 0.5 grams of cannabis — less than 0.02 ounces — in Zecler’s bag and that the security camera footage showed that the officers had followed Zecler inside before beating him, while Zecler did not appear violent toward the officers.

Heitz said that the officers had admitted under questioning that their blows against Zecler “were not justified” but that they had told investigators that they had been acting “under the influence of fear” because they had been unable to bring a struggling Zecler under control in the cramped entrance to the recording studio.

Footage filmed by a neighbor and published last week

by Loopsider showed, however, that one officer continued to hit Zecler on the street even as he was surrounded by about a dozen other officers. Several young artists who were attending a recording session at the studio were also hit by the police, according to the video.

Heitz also said that the officers, who have not been involved in previous incidents, denied using a racial slur.

The beating has fueled long-standing frustration that the French government is doing little to address accusations of police violence, especially against ethnic minorities. Macron said in his statement on Facebook last week that he had asked the government to come up with proposals to restore the public’s confidence in police — a demand he has already made twice this year, first in January when a deliveryman died after police officers pinned him to the ground and put him in a chokehold, then again in June amid the global fallout over George Floyd’s killing.

But the beating has also struck a nerve amid more recent discontent over Macron’s security policies, which critics say infringe on civil liberties and shield the police from scrutiny.

Tens of thousands of people protested around France over the weekend against a security bill that would restrict sharing images of police officers. The bill was passed by the lower house of Parliament and still needs to be considered by the Senate, but the government is already facing mounting demands from civil rights groups, journalist unions and left-wing opposition parties for the revision or removal of key provisions.

That pressure has escalated since Zecler’s beating, even though it is not clear that the bill — which would criminalize the broadcasting of “the face or any other identifying element” of on-duty police officers if the goal is to “physically or mentally harm” them — would have applied in the case.

Frédéric Veaux, head of the French national police, said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper Sunday that he had been “scandalized, like the rest of the police in this country” by the assault, comparing the officers who beat Zecler to “criminals” and promising that the police would be equipped with 15,000 new body cameras by next summer.

But Veaux denied that the relationship between the police and the French population was “damaged.”

“The police is a reflection of society; is it not on the margins,” he said, adding that there had been a “disinhibition” of the violence toward security forces over the past few years, especially after the Yellow Vest protests.

While the demonstrations Saturday against the security bill were mostly peaceful, they were marred by violent clashes between police and demonstrators later in the day.

An independent photographer from Syria, Ameer al-Halbi, was badly hurt when he was hit in the face by a police officer wielding a baton, which the head of Reporters Without Borders called “unacceptable.” Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said nearly 100 security forces had also been wounded, including one police officer in riot gear who was violently beaten by demonstrators in Paris.

Riot police officers clashing with demonstrators in Paris on Saturday. Tens of thousands of people protested around France over the weekend against a security bill that would restrict sharing images of police officers.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Republicans and Democrats need to work together. Earmarks can help.

By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

A

s the Trump presidency fades to black, it is time for Washington to get to work. In embracing Joe Biden, the American people cast a vote for civility, pragmatism and competence. Lawmakers now have a duty to hunker down and find ways to make progress on critical issues. But with both chambers of Congress narrowly divided and ideologically polarized, coming together on even the most modest deals could prove daunting.

One promising move under consideration: bringing back congressional earmarks.

Loosely speaking, earmarks are spending requests — or, depending on your definition, also limited tax or tariff benefits — inserted into bills at the behest of individual lawmakers for the benefit of specific entities in specific locations. Think funding for a domestic violence crisis center in Alaska or for STEM programs in a rural school district in Colorado.

In the big picture, earmarks add up to little more than a rounding error, generally constituting not more than 1% of the federal budget. They are used to determine spending priorities, not spending levels, meaning they determine how the pie gets divided rather than how big it is.

As conceived, earmarks allow the people who pre-

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sumably best understand a state or district — its elected officials — to direct federal dollars to where they are most needed. In practice, they also gets used for all kinds of daffy or ill-conceived projects. Remember the infamous Bridge to Nowhere? Classic earmarking. At its most vile, the process veers into organized bribery as special interests pursue ethically questionable and occasionally illegal means to get lawmakers to champion their pet issues. In the mid-2000s, a handful of earmarkrelated scandals landed some prominent political players in prison. Earmarks became a tidy symbol of government waste and corruption.

In 2007, the Democratic-controlled House began reforming the practice, increasing transparency and accountability. Members were required to attach their names to requests and to certify that they had no financial interests in the projects. Beneficiaries were limited to nonprofit entities or public projects. In 2011, Republicans assumed control of the chamber and went even further, declaring a moratorium on earmarks.

This ban has made Congress less accountable and more dysfunctional. It is time to abandon the experiment.

Despite their bad reputation, earmarks are not inherently corrupt. Since America’s earliest days, they have proved a useful tool for building coalitions. (The first known instance of congressional earmarking dates to the Lighthouse Act of 1789.) Nothing greases the gears of government quite like pork. A lawmaker may not care for a larger bill, per se, but the ability to slip in a little something for the voters back home can be a compelling motivator. “Without earmarks to offer, it’s hard to herd the cats,” John Boehner, the former House speaker, once observed.

It is this utility that many earmark opponents object to. They do not want costly legislation to be easier to pass. The budget watchdog group Citizens Against Go-

vernment Waste warns that “earmarks cause members to vote for excessively expensive spending bills that cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for a few earmarks worth a few million or sometimes just thousands of dollars.”

Considering the thicket of crises the nation is facing, big-ticket legislation, including another meaty round of coronavirus relief, is precisely what is needed.

Of course, the earmark ban didn’t really ban earmarks. Pork spending simply became stealthier, with some members falling back on similar, more convoluted moves such as “phonemarking” or “lettermarking.” Worse, nonearmark earmarks are not subject to the same transparency requirements, making them harder to track.

So much for increased accountability.

There are also questions of constitutional authority.

When Congress declines to specify how the money it appropriates is spent, the executive branch is happy to fill the void. Curtailing congressional earmarks “simply shifts that power more explicitly to a president and a cadre of unelected bureaucrats,” according to John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Presidential Pork.” “Eliminating earmarking is a serious abdication of power by Congress which empowers a branch of government beyond what the Founders intended,” he has argued.

This argument should have special appeal for Republican lawmakers, who like to complain that unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable regulators have too much authority.

Since 2011, clusters of lawmakers have periodically flirted with restoring earmarks, only to abandon the efforts.

The practice remains easy to demagogue, especially with mistrust of government running high. In the wake of this month’s election, House Democrats are approaching the issue with renewed energy. In a recent interview with Roll Call, Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, said that once the new chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee is chosen, she would begin asking members to submit “congressional initiatives for their districts and their states.”

Members in both chambers should facilitate this process — working to ensure that the new system has maximum transparency and sufficient oversight, of course. Earmarks are not a magic cure-all for today’s hyperpolarized politics. They are unlikely to, for instance, convince conservatives to support the Green New Deal or members of the progressive “Squad” to back corporate tax breaks. But restoring positive incentives for lawmakers to embrace negotiation and compromise could provide at least some counterbalance to the partisan forces fueling rigidity and gridlock.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

19

Estudiante de la UPR de Cayey logra promedio más alto en examen de reválida de químicos a nivel isla Por THE STAR

E

l Departamento de Química de la Universidad de Puerto Rico en Cayey (UPR-Cayey) anunció este lunes que la estudiante Danixa Rodríguez Meléndez obtuvo el promedio más alto en el examen de la reválida de químicos de Puerto Rico, según notificó el presidente de la junta examinadora de química.

“Nos sentimos sumamente orgullosos de Danixa Rodríguez Meléndez por este gran logro. No cabe duda, que el mismo es fruto de su esfuerzo y dedicación. Esto, de la mano de los profeso-res que la han guiado durante su preparación académica en la Universidad de Puerto Rico en Cayey. Le auguramos mucho éxito en su trayecto académico y en su carrera profesional. ¡Enhorabuena!”, expuso la doctora Glorivee Rosario Pérez, rectora de la UPR Cayey, en una declaración escrita.

Danixa agradeció a todos sus profesores en la institución por todo lo enseñado en sus clases. “Gracias por guiarme en mi formación como química. ¡Gracias por tanto!”, expresó la química.

Con los protocolos de rigor se pueden visitar los museos de Caguas Por THE STAR

E

l Departamento de Desarrollo Cultural del Municipio Autónomo de Caguas informó este lunes que su Programa de Museos reabrió algunas de sus facilidades al público, cumpliendo con las recomendaciones y guías emitidas por el CDC, OSHA y la Asociación de Museos de Puerto Rico, para garantizar la integridad de visitantes y empleados.

La intención es ofrecer, dentro de los protocolos de seguridad y salubridad, un espacio de entretenimiento, esparcimiento y solaz al público en general, se informó en una declaración escrita.

Los museos disponibles para visitas con previa coordinación son los siguientes: Museo de Caguas, Museo de Artes Populares, Museo de Arte de Caguas y Casa del Trovador.

Para realizar visitas los ciudadanos deben cumplir con las siguientes instrucciones: – Coordinación de reservación vía telefónica con la Oficina de Turismo al (787) 653-8833 extensión 2984, 2917; con un mínimo de 72 horas de antelación previa a la fecha proyectada del recorrido.

– Las visitas serán en horario de 10:00 de la mañana a 3:00 de la tarde, de martes a sábado.

– Las visitas tienen un tiempo máximo de 30 minutos.

– La capacidad máxima por museo será de seis visitantes para cumplir con el distanciamiento social.

De no llegar a tiempo a la reservación se evaluará disponibilidad de horario en el mismo día programado o se reprogramará para fecha futura de acuerdo a disponibilidad.

- Todo visitante estará sujeto al proceso de cernimiento establecido: - Uso de mascarilla en todo momento.

- Toma de temperatura (100.4 grados Fahrenheit no se permitirá entrada a las facilidades).

- Información sobre viajes al exterior.

- Preguntas sobre sintomatología relacionadas al COVID-19.

- Desinfección de manos y zapatos antes de entrar a las facilidades.

- No se permite el uso de guantes durante el recorrido a las Salas de Exhibición.

- De no seguir las reglas durante el recorrido, se solicitará al visitante o grupo se retire de la Sala de Exhibición de manera, para así asegurar la salud y seguridad de todos en la facilidad.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Amanda Seyfried finally stakes her claim

By KYLE BUCHANAN

T

he goats didn’t want to go out in the morning, Amanda Seyfried said. There was one in particular that was giving her trouble, the one Seyfried described as the “God-knows-howbig-she-is goat.” This one was spoiling for a fight. This one could not be moved.

So what did Seyfried do? She got in that goat shed, planted her feet and pushed.

The goat pushed back, of course.

That’s the thing about goats: They’re stubborn. They also have horns, and Seyfried, a 34-year-old actress, does not.

It was frustrating. It was exhausting. It was also, Seyfried hastened to add, completely awesome.

And that’s one of the primary reasons Seyfried lives on a farm in the Catskills instead of in some overpriced condo on the Sunset Strip: A morning tussle with your goats has the ability to put just about everything else into perspective. “It’s insane how much I can feel so accomplished and successful here without having to be in a successful movie,” she said.

Seyfried shares the farm with several chickens, horses of wildly varying sizes, a donkey named Gus, those goats, her actor husband, Thomas Sadoski, and their two children. That last bit somehow proved the most surprising: During a week of conversations over Zoom, Seyfried wore no makeup and looked scarcely older than the breathy ditz she played in “Mean Girls” (2004) or the singing bride from “Mamma Mia!” (2008). But she is a mother now, a farmer and, for the first time in her career, a significant Oscar contender.

In Netflix’s new drama “Mank,” directed by David Fincher and due Friday on Netflix, Seyfried plays Marion Davies, the 1920s and ’30s screen star better known today as the mistress of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It’s a relationship that would be fictionalized for Orson Welles’ roman à clef “Citizen Kane,” and “Mank” chronicles that process, as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) remi-

nisces about the years he spent partying at Hearst’s San Simeon estate, a glittery Shangri-La where Davies became a confidante with whom he could share gossip and gin.

Seyfried has just a handful of scenes in “Mank,” but she still walks away with the movie, playing Davies as gratifyingly sly and self-aware, a brassy, no-airs girl from Brooklyn who has been plopped into a castle by Hearst and is determined to make the most of it. Davies throws parties, drinks too much and often says the wrong thing, but when you say the wrong thing in upper-crust circles, it just means you’ve told some wealthy men the truth, and the girl can’t help it.

Despite her fair share of hits, Seyfried was still shocked when she ran into Quentin Tarantino at the airport recently and he knew who she was. “Keep your expectations low,” she told me, “and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” Last fall, when her agent relayed that Fincher had her in mind for “Mank,” Seyfried’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s really nice to be respected by somebody that you think is just a one-of-a-kind master of his domain,” she said.

In a phone interview, Fincher compared Seyfried to Cameron Diaz — a mainstream comedienne who was always capable of giving more, even if she was rarely asked for it.

“We all knew that Amanda was luminescent, we all knew that she was effervescent, we all knew that she was funny,” he said. “We all knew that she understood how to parse or set up a joke, and we all knew that she could be moving. I think the thing that was ultimately surprising was the mercurial nature of how quickly she could scramble through those things, because it gives Marion this whole other dimension.”

Fincher is famous for shooting dozens upon dozens of takes, a process that can frustrate movie stars who are used to nailing their lines and moving on. Seyfried found his method to be a dream. She wasn’t rushed, she wasn’t discounted. Finally, she had the space to see what she was made of. “It

The actress Amanda Seyfried on her Catskills farm in upstate New York, Nov. 7, 2020. was my turn,” she said. “It was me.”

What made Seyfried pursue acting in the first place? “I’m still sorting this out with my therapist,” she said. But she sees a lot of herself in her 3-year-old daughter, Nina, who is creative, quick to express herself and eager for affirmation. Becoming a mother has often prodded Seyfried to look back on the arc of her own life, and from her vantage point in the Catskills, things play a little differently now.

After a pleasant childhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where her filmbuff father got Seyfried hooked on Laurel and Hardy comedies and classics like “Nosferatu,” she spent her teenage years commuting to New York City to film episodes of the soap operas “As the World Turns” and “All My Children.”

Some actresses take forever to land their first breakthrough credit. Seyfried’s first movie was “Mean Girls.”

That’s a pretty heady beginning for someone who’s still trying to figure herself out. All Seyfried knew back then is that she loved the attention, loved earning a laugh, and loved making people feel something. And when she was young, she was eager to use all of herself in every role.

Maybe that’s why she was successful so early. Blessed with those big eyes and an intimate, immediate connection with the camera, it wasn’t hard for Seyfried to convince you she was feeling something: She really, really was. “I don’t think I’ve ever unpacked what that did to me emotionally,” she said.

Her tendency to burn brightly and her lifelong eagerness to please has sometimes made her an easy mark, she knows now. “If you don’t have boundaries, then you’re screwed in this industry,” she said. “That is a scary place for a young person, somebody who doesn’t have a backbone — which was me. And I paid for it.”

She recalled a job she booked when she was still a teenager, where the director asked her to appear nearly nude on screen. Without anyone else on set to advocate for her, she reluctantly agreed to take her clothes off.

“I have been put in very insane positions,” she said. “I was walking around with no underpants on and a T-shirt, and I didn’t want to be, yet I didn’t feel like I had any power to say, ‘No, this makes me uncomfortable.’” (She wouldn’t name the project.)

That’s part of why at 22, Seyfried began looking at houses outside Hollywood. As her career kept heating up, she needed to draw her own boundaries, to remind herself that a set is not home, that home is home. Seven years ago, coming off roles in “Les Misérables” and “Lovelace,” she finally happened across the farm in the Catskills and knew it was what she had long been searching for.

Her business manager demurred, but Seyfried put her foot down: “I was like, ‘No, Mark! I’m telling you, this is where I’m going to die.’”

Later, she met, married and moved in Sadoski, and children would eventually be added to the farm’s menagerie, including a son born in September. Spending the last few years in the Catskills has “solidified my need to be out of the game when I’m not working, to be in nature and to refresh,” Seyfried said. “Everybody needs a center of gravity. Somewhere to feel safe.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

21

Bah, pandemic! How theaters are saving ‘A Christmas Carol’

By MICHAEL PAULSON

F

or all his flaws, that cranky old miser Ebenezer Scrooge has been a godsend for American theaters. Through recessions and blizzards and other upheavals, he has drawn small children and big money to his redemption story in “A Christmas Carol.”

Stage adaptations of the tale, which generally run between Thanksgiving and year-end, have been a tradition and a lifeline for troupes big and small, professional and amateur. But now, after decades in which the Dickens classic has sustained them, this year theaters are sustaining Dickens.

Gone are the large-cast extravaganzas playing before cheery crowds in packed venues. Instead, theaters are using every contagion-reduction strategy they have honed during the coronavirus pandemic: outdoor stagings, drive-in productions, street theater, streaming video, radio plays and even a do-it-yourself kit sent by mail.

Many of these theaters are willingly running the longlucrative show at a loss. They are hungry to create, determined to stay visible and eager to satisfy those “Christmas Carol” die-hards who don’t want to miss a year.

“It’s absolutely an obligation, in the best sense of that word,” said Curt Columbus, the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company, in Providence, Rhode Island, which has staged “A Christmas Carol” each holiday season since 1977. “The story felt more urgent, and more necessary, than it has in many years.”

A primer for those who don’t know a Cratchit from a Fezziwig: “A Christmas Carol” is an exceptionally durable novella, written by Charles Dickens and published in 1843, about the transformation, via a series of ghostly visitations, of a wealthy businessman (that’s Scrooge) from mean and miserly to caring and charitable.

Dickens himself performed readings of the story for more than two decades, with stops in the United States as well as Britain, until his death in 1870; it has been repeatedly adapted for stage and screen, and the story, in one form or another, has been a seasonal staple of U.S. regional theater since the 1970s. Last year a critically lauded adaptation from England’s Old Vic theater reached Broadway; this year, it will be livestreamed from its London home, fully staged but audience-free. “ ‘A Christmas Carol’ does everything we talk about when we talk about theater: It builds community, and it tugs us toward our better selves,” said Joseph Haj, the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which has staged the story since 1975, last year selling 57,900 tickets to the show.

This year, the Guthrie will stream a retelling by four actors. It will cost $10 to watch and will be free for schools.

Haj doesn’t expect to make money on it. Nor does Leda Hoffmann, artistic director of the Contemporary American Theatre Company in Columbus, Ohio, which, for $20 per device, will stream a contemporary reimagining with Ebony Scrooge at its center.

“This is very likely a losing proposition, but we’re telling the story because we want to tell it,” she said.

Jefferson Mays while filming his one-man performance of “A Christmas Carol” at the United Palace theater in New York, Oct. 30, 2020.

The financial implications are enormous, especially for those that have opted not to charge at all. Ford’s Theatre in Washington last year sold $2.5 million worth of tickets to “A Christmas Carol.” This year, it is releasing a free audio version on its website and on public radio, paid for by corporate sponsorships and donations.

“Hopefully it will come back to us in other ways,” said Paul R. Tetreault, Ford’s director.

The money that “A Christmas Carol” usually brings in allows theaters to perform more challenging work at other times of the year.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, where Ira David Wood III, the artistic and executive director of Theatre in the Park, has been playing Scrooge in a musical adaptation since 1974 (he missed one year, when he had open-heart surgery), the money earned from the holiday show “enables us to do ‘Uncle Vanya’ and play to maybe 12 people,” he said.

Like many major regional theaters, Providence’s Trinity Rep is enormously dependent on the show, which accounts for half of all annual sales. This year, its one-hour streaming version looks still to be popular — in the first 72 hours, 75,000 people from 46 states signed up to watch. But ticket revenue, which last year topped $1.7 million, will be zero, because the video is being aired for free.

“This thing has kept American theaters alive for decades and decades,” said Charles Fee, producing artistic director of Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland. “Without ‘Christmas Carol,’ our company would almost certainly have failed.”

The 2020 renditions are taking place in every imaginable fashion, although rarely the traditional. Tuesday, a prominent regional theater still hoping to stage an indoor production — the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia — canceled all live performances and replaced them with digital options, citing the resurgent pandemic.

Live outdoor productions are requiring social distancing and masks.

“Obviously we understand the gravity of trying to do something right now, and we’re in a perpetual state of anxiety,” said Christopher Brazelton, executive director of the Elm Street Cultural Arts Village in Woodstock, Georgia, which is planning a short run of an open-air concert version of its annual “Christmas Carol” musical.

The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta is opting for a drive-in “live radio play” in a parking lot across from a college football stadium. Four performers will be ensconced in separate shipping containers, with attendees encouraged to honk their horns, flash lights and sing along with Christmas carols.

And the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival has enlisted PaintedBlack STL, a coalition of local Black artists, to create scenes from “A Christmas Carol” in 21 storefronts around that city’s Central West End; as patrons wander from window to window, scanning a QR code will allow them to listen to the story as sung by a hip-hop group, Q Brothers Collective.

On weekend nights, there will be live performers along the route.

The most popular solutions are versions of the new normal — streaming, in Milwaukee and Houston, for example, and radio, in cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Louisville, Kentucky.

Kristin Küns plays the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Lyric Theater of Oklahoma’s outdoor production of “A Christmas Carol,” on a a historic homestead in Oklahoma City, Nov. 8, 2020.

22

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

A cat is said to be joining the Bidens in the White House released Super Nintendo game, “Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill,” and often gained attention from the news media, as he was the only White House pet until the Clintons adopted a chocolate Lab named Buddy in 1997.

Jennifer Pickens, a White House historian and author of “Pets at the White House: 50 Years of Presidents and Their Pets,” said the emergence of the internet had added to Socks’ popularity as a cartoon version of the cat greeted visitors at the White House for Kids website.

The last cat to live in the White House, India (who also had the nickname Willie), belonged to President George W. Bush. Her time at the White House was often overshadowed by the Bush family’s two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, Hager said.

Protesters in Kerala, India, burned an effigy of Bush in July 2004 in protest of the cat’s name, citing it as an insult to their country, Hager said. (According to White House archives, the black shorthair cat was named after the former Texas Rangers baseball player, Ruben Sierra, who went by the nickname El Indio.)

India died in January 2009, just before Bush left the White House.

Interest in presidential pets has grown over the years as the public has gravitated to more stories of life inside the White House, Pickens said.

Pets can help humanize presidents as well as soften their image, and with the Bidens’ newest addition, they could also represent a president’s hopes for the nation under new leadership.

“Maybe this is symbolic of Biden’s oft-repeated desire to unify the country,” she said. “I know that that’s kind of trite, but I’m very curious to see how this goes.”

President Bill Clinton owned two pets, a cat named Socks and a dog named Buddy.

By ALLYSON WALLER

W

hen he was running for president, Joe Biden said it was time for a pet to be put back in the White House.

First it was announced that Champ and Major, the German shepherds belonging to the president-elect and future first lady Jill Biden, would roam the White House. And now, after an absence of more than a decade, a cat is set to also join the ranks of presidential pets, Jane Pauley of “CBS Sunday Morning” reported on Twitter on Friday.

In an interview with Fox 5 in Washington, D.C., Jill Biden hinted that if her husband won the presidency, she would not mind getting a cat.

“I’d love to get a cat,” she said. “I love having animals around the house.”

The cat’s breed and name were not immediately available. Representatives for Joe Biden did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

The Bidens will be restoring a tradition of presiden-

tial pets when they move into the White House in January, as President Donald Trump opted not to have a pet during his term. But the Bidens’ cat won’t be the first in the White House.

Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, gave him two cats, Tabby and Dixie, said Andrew Hager, historian-in-residence at the Presidential Pet Museum. Lincoln was a major “cat fan,” Hager said, and the president often fed Tabby from the dinner table despite his wife’s criticism.

“At one point, he told a friend that Dixie was ‘smarter than his entire Cabinet’ and ‘didn’t talk back, which was a bonus,’” Hager said.

Other presidential cats include Tom Kitten, who belonged to Caroline Kennedy; Shan Shein, the siamese cat of President Gerald Ford’s daughter, Susan; and Misty Malarky Ying Yang, who belonged to President Jimmy Carter’s daughter, Amy. Probably one of the most popular cats in the White House was Socks in the Clinton White House.

The black and white cat was the protagonist of an un-

Dr. Jill Biden photographed with the Biden family’s two dogs Major and Champ.

The San Juan Daily Star ron el lote que desean inscribir mediante este procedimiento , ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE en dos predios con cabidas origiPUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE nales de 1,147.62 M.C y 796.02 PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE M.C y que ·1os Peticionarios CAROLINA. poseyeron como si fuera un solo EVA ILIA PÉREZ CRESPO, predio desde sus respectivas compras, efectuadas por las esWILFRED APONTE números diecisiete (17) PÉREZ Y LIAM MAGALY crituras del 17 de abril de 1979, ante APONTE PÉREZ Amílcar Soto Santiago y doce PETICIONARIOS (12) del 17 de octubre de 1985, EX PARTE ante el mismo Notario. Ni los reCIVIL NÚM. CA2020CV0060. feridos dos lotes, ni la propiedad SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DO- formada por los mismos y que MINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS los Peticionarios desean inscribir UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRE- ahora como un solo predio, están SIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL afectos a cargas o gravámenes ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE de clase alguna. Este Tribunal PR. ordenó que se publique la pretensión por tres (3) veces duranA: Gladys Casillas Nieves e Isabel Nieves te el término de veinte (20) días en un periódico de circulación Rodríguez, miembros de general diaria, para que todas la Sucesión de Eliseo las personas arriba mencionadas y todas aquellas desconocidas Casillas, inmediato a quienes pueda perjudicar la anterior dueño del o deseen oponerse, predio abajo descrito, inscripción puedan así hacerlo dentro del ambas con dirección en término de veinte (20) días a 12944 Little Elliot Dr., partir de la última publicación del Hagerstown, Maryland presente edicto. Por tanto firmo expido la presente en Carolina, 21742; a todo el que Puerto Rico, a 14 de Septiembre tenga algún interés de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte propietario, o derecho Rodriguez, Secretaría Regional. real sobre el inmueble Rosa M. Viera Velazquez, Subdescrito en la Petición secretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE

de Dominio del caso de epígrafe, a las personas ignoradas a quienes pueda perjudicar la inscripción del mismo, y, en general, a toda persona que desee oponerse.

POR LA PRESENTE: se les notifica que los peticionarios de epígrafe, han presentado una Petición para que se declare a favor de ellos, el dominio que tienen sobre la siguiente propiedad: “RÚSTICA: Predio de terreno denominado Parcela Uno (1) en el plano de inscripción localizado en el barrio Cedros de Carolina, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de mil seiscientos sesenta punto cuatro mil doscientos dieciocho metros cuadrados (1,660.4218.MC), equivalentes a punto cuatro mil doscientos veinticinco diezmilésimas de cuerda (.4225 Cda.) y en lindes: por el Norte con terrenos de la Sucesión de Agustín Rodríguez; ahora, Eleuterio Álamo Resto; por el Sur, con Parcela marcada Dos del mismo Plano, ahora Luis Cruz; por el Este, con quebrada y área a dedicarse a uso público y por el Oeste, con camino de uso público.” Dicho “lote es parte de la finca número 43,955, inscrita al folio 259 del tomo 1047, finca número de la Sección II de Carolina, propiedad de Eliseo Casill.as Pérez de quien la copeticionaria Eva l. Crespo Pérez y su esposo Wilfredo Aponte Aponte adquirie-

@

LEGAL NOT ICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN SALA SUPERIOR.

E.M.I. EQUITY MORTGAGE, INC DEMANDANTE VS.

NELSON OCASIO MOJICA (DEUDOR HIPOTECARIO); JORGE ERNESTO MEDINA PEREZ, ALMA FELIX FLORES ROBLES Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS (TITULARES REGISTRALES)

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SJ2019CV01492.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el 12 de

Tuesday, December 1, 2020 enero de 2021, a las 9:30 de la mañana, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en: D-1 CALLE VIA LAS ALTURAS URB. LA VISTA SAN JUAN, PR 00926 y que se describe a continuación: RUSTICA: Parcela de terreno, identificada como solar #1 del bloque D de la Urbanización La Vista, radicada en el barrio Sabana Llana del término municipal de San Juan, con una cabida superficial de 330.87 metros cuadrados. En linderos: Norte, en una distancia de 14.50 metros con el solar #13; por el Sur, en una distancia de 11.00 metros y otra en arco de 2.75 metros con la calle #3; por el Este, en una distancia de 23.00 metros con el solar #2 y por el Oeste, en una distancia de 19.50 metros y otra en arco de 2.75 metros con la calle #4. ENCLAVA: Una casa de concreto diseñada para una familia. La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita al Folio 121 del Tomo 739 de Sabana Llana, finca número 29609, Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan Sección Quinta. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $209,267.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 20 de enero de 2021, a las 9:30 de la mañana. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $139,511.33. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 27 de enero de 2021, a las 9:30 de la mañana. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $104,633.50. Las hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura de hipoteca número 198 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 22 de mayo de 2018, ante el Notario Jaime E. Dávila Santini, y consta inscrita al Tomo Karibe de la Quinta Sección de San Juan, finca número 29609 de Sabana Llana, en el Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Quinta, inscripción Novena (9na). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al Demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

que ha obtenido ascendente a la suma de $209,267.00 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de julio de 2018, más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.1/4% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación.

Además la parte co-demandada Nelson Ocasio Mojica adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $20,926.70. Además la parte codemandada Nelson Ocasio Mojica se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $20,926.70 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según surge de las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad en un estudio de título efectuado a la finca antes descrita. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores desconocidos, no inscritos o presentados que sus acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el

(787) 743-3346

25 Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas.

Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 18 de noviembre de 2020.

EDWIN E. LOPEZ MULERO, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR. ***

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.

BOSCO IX OVERSEAS, LLC, representado por su Agente de Servicios FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION Demandante vs.

ALISON ESCOBAR LOPEZ, su esposa IRIS CARRASQUILLO SANTIAGO, también conocida como IRIS CARRASQUILLO SANTA y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. FBCI201700863 (409). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria). EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

Al: Público en General A: ALISON ESCOBAR LOPEZ, su esposa IRIS CARRASQUILLO SANTIAGO, también conocida como IRIS CARRASQUILLO SANTA y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, por tener embargos anotados a su favor por las sumas de $6,742.41 y $14,108.70

Yo, MANUEL VILLAFAÑE BLANCO, Alguacil de este Tribunal, a la parte demandada y a los acreedores y personas con interés sobre la propiedad que más adelante se describe, y al público en general, HAGO SABER:

Que el día 12 de enero de 2021, a las 10:45 de la mañana en mi oficina, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina, Carolina, Puerto Rico, venderé en Pública Subasta la propiedad inmueble que más adelante se describe y cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó por la vía ordinaria al mejor postor quien hará el pago en dinero en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del o la Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Carolina durante horas laborables. Que en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta a celebrarse, se celebrará una segunda subasta para la venta de la susodicha propiedad, el día 19 de enero de 2021, a las 10:45 de la mañana y en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación, se celebrará una tercera subasta el día 26 de enero de 2021, a las 10:45 de la mañana en mi oficina sita en el lugar antes indicado. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: RUSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número Doscientos Dieciocho guión A (218-A) en el plano de parcelación de la COMUNIDAD RURAL SAN ISIDRO del Barrio San Isidro del término municipal de Canóvanas, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de MIL DOSCIENTOS NOVENTA Y CUATRO PUNTO SETENTA Y SEIS (1,294.76) METROS CUADRADOS. En lindes por el NORTE, con terrenos de la Autoridad de Tierras; por el SUR, con Calle número Uno (1) de la Comunidad; por el ESTE, con parcelas número Doscientos Diecisiete (217) y la Doscientos Dieciséis (216) de la Comunidad; y por el OESTE, con parcela número Doscientos Diecinueve (219) de la Comunidad. La escritura de hipoteca se encuentra inscrita al folio 203 del tomo 435 de Canóvanas, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Tercera, finca número 12,818, inscripción cuarta. La dirección física de la propiedad antes descrita es: Parcela 218-A, Calle 1, Barrio San Isidro, Canóvanas, Puerto Rico. La Subasta se llevará a efecto para satisfacer a la parte demandante la suma de $38,758.08 de principal, intereses al 7.50% anual, desde el día 1ro de marzo de 2017, hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $7,000.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado y recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están líquidas y exigibles. Que la cantidad mínima de licitación en la primera subasta para el inmueble será de $70,000.00 y de ser necesaria una segunda subasta, la cantidad mínima será equiva-

lente a 2/3 partes de aquella, o sea, la suma de $46,666.67 y de ser necesaria una tercera subasta, la cantidad mínima será la mitad del precio pactado, es decir, la suma de $35,000.00. La propiedad se adjudicará al mejor postor, quien deberá satisfacer el importe de su oferta en moneda legal y corriente de los Estados Unidos de América en el momento de la adjudicación y que las cargas y gravámenes preferentes, si los hubiese, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate.

La propiedad hipotecada a ser vendida en pública Subasta se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes posteriores: Embargo Federal, contra A. Escobar López, seguro social número xxx-xx-8037, dirección Calle 2, Parcela 149, Canóvanas, Puerto Rico 00729-0000, por la suma de $6,742.41, notificación número 992236014, presentado el día 11 de abril de 2014 y anotado al folio 22, Asiento 3 del libro de Embargos Federales Número 4. Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Tercera. Embargo Federal, contra A. Escobar López e I. Carrasquillo, seguro social número xxx-xx-8037, dirección Calle 2, Parcela 149, Canóvanas, Puerto Rico 00729-0000, por la suma de $14,108.70, notificación número 992235914, presentado el día 11 de abril de 2014 y anotado al folio 22, Asiento 4 del libro de Embargos Federales Número 4. Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Tercera. La propiedad a ser vendida en pública subasta se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto para conocimiento y comparecencia de los licitadores, bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 10 de noviembre de 2020. MANUEL VILLAFAÑE BLANCO, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.

CENTRO RECAUDACION INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Demandados CIVIL NUM. JCD2009-1736 (G028). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: La Parte Demandada, al (a la) Secretario(a) de Hacienda de Puerto Rico y al Público General: Certifico y Hago Constar:

Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Ponce, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Certificado, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, el 21 de enero de 2021, a las 1:30 de la tarde, todo derecho título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número 63 de la Comunidad Rural Coto Laurel, radicada en el Barrio Coto Laurel del término municipal de Ponce, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 289.64 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con Carretera Estatal Número 14; por el SUR, con la parcela número 103 de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con la Calle número 4 de la comunidad; y por el OESTE, con la parcela número 64 de la comunidad. Sobre dicho solar enclava una casa de cuatro cuartos dormitorios, una cocina, balcón, marquesina y uno y medio baños. En su inscripción 2nda se dice que enclava la siLEGAL NOTICE guiente casa: Casa de hormigón ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE reforzado y bloques de concreto PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE destinado a vivienda, consistente PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SU- de seis cuartos dormitorios, una cocina, sala, comedor, balcón, PERIOR DE PONCE. LIME RESIDENTIAL, LTD marquesina y un y medio baños. Finca 46995 inscrita al folio Demandante 272 del tomo 1542 de Ponce, SUCESION DE Sección Primera, Registro de la FRANCISCA ROCHE Propiedad de Ponce. Propiedad COLON, COMPUESTA localizada en: Comunidad Coto POR SUS HEREDEROS Laurel, 63 Calle B, Ponce, PR Según figuran en la cerLUIS, MIGUEL, EVELYN, 00780 tificación registral, la propiedad IRMA, JUDITH, LYDIA objeto de ejecución está gravada IVETTE, JUANA Y por las siguientes cargas anteriores o preferentes: Nombre de!

RAFAEL TODOS DE Titular: N/A Suma de !a Carga: APELLIDOS OLMON/A Fecha de Vencimiento: N/A ROCHE; DEPARTAMENTO Según figuran en la certificación DE HACIENDA; Y registra!, la propiedad objeto de

24 ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas posteriores a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: a. AVISO DE DEMANDA con fecha 24 de diciembre de 2009 radicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, en el caso civil número JCD2009-1736 sobre cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca; Citimortgage, Inc., demandante y. Sucesión de Francisca Roche Colón compuesta por sus herederos Luis, Miguel, Evelyn, Irma, Judith, Lydia Ivette, Juana y Rafael todos de apellido Olmo Roche; Departamento de Hacienda y Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales (CRIM), demandados. Por la misma se reclama el pago de $24,048.71, garantizado con la Hipoteca relacionada en la inscripción 6’.

Anotada el 6 de mayo de 2010 al folio 129 del tomo 2098 de Ponce, finca 46995, anotación “A”.

Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes. El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo mínimo de subasta la suma de $27,500.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la escritura de hipoteca.

De ser necesaria una segunda subasta por declararse desierta la primera, la misma se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, el 28 de enero de 2021, a las 1:30 de la tarde, , y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $18,333.33, dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la tercera subasta, la suma de $13,750.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, el 4 de febrero de 2021, a las 1:30 de la tarde. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $24,048.71 de principal, intereses al tipo del 8.00000% anual según ajustado desde el día 1 de junio de 2009 hasta el pago de la deuda en su totalidad, más la suma de $2,750.00 por concepto de honorarios de abogado y costas autorizadas por el Tribunal, más las cantidades que se adeudan mensualmente por concepto de seguro hipotecario, cargos por demora, y otros adeudados que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto

se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta. Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias de! expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Ponce, Puerto Rico, hoy día 10 de noviembre de 2020. JORGE M. HERNANDEZ PAGAN, Alguacil Regional.

LEGAL NOTICE EST ADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN.

WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, D/B/ A CHRISTIANA TRUST, AS INDENTURE TRUSTEE, FOR THE CSMC 2015-PRl TRUST MORTGAGEBACKED NOTES, SERIES 2015-PRl PARTE DEMANDANTE vs.

NILSA JANNETTE ANDINO REYES, TAMBIEN CONOCIDA COMO NILSA ANDINO REYES

PARTE DEMANDADA CIVIL NUM. SJ2019CV07768 (604). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

A: NILSA JANNETTE ANDINO REYES, TAMBIEN CONOCIDA COMO NILSA ANDINO REYES

Queda emplazada y notificada de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca en su contra. Se le notifica que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaria del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de San Juan y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Lcda. Marjaliisa Colon Villanueva, PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

00732; Teléfono: 787-843-4168, Email: mcolon@wwclaw.com. Se le apercibe y notifica que si no contesta la demanda radicada en su contra dentro del termino de treinta (30) días de Ia publicación de este edicto, se le anotara la rebeldía y se dictara sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin mas citárseles, ni oírseles. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, a 7 de octubre de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Sec Regional.

Luz Enid Fernandez del Valle, Sec Serv a Sala.

Y EL SELLO DEL TRIBUNAL, en ARECIBO, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020.

VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, Sec Regional. Maribel Rivera Gonzalez, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

SIMEON CRUZ VIZCAINO

LEGAL NOTICE

SANCHEZ

Demandante v.

DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION AHORA BANCO POPULAR DE PR, JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Demandado(a) Instancia Sala Superior de CACivil: CA2020CV01841. SALA ROLINA. 408. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN O DLJ MORTGAGE RESTITUCIÓN DE PAGARE EXCAPITAL INC. TRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE Demandante Vs SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE Y

Y OTROS ESTADd ÜBRE ASOCIADO DE RICHARD ROE COMO Demandado PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE POSIBLES TENEDORES PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO Civil Núm.: CA2018CV01994.

DESCONOCIDOS Salón: 409. Sobre: EJECUCION JUDICIAL DE ARECIBO. DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA OR- (Nombre de las parles a las que se le WILLIAM notifican la sentencia por edicto) DINARIA Y COBRO DE DINEGUZMAN ACEVEDO EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscriRO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENDemandante vs. be le notifica a usted que 23 de TENCIA POR EDICTO. noviembre de 2020, este Tribunal LOURDES VEGA T/C/C A. SIMEON CRUZ ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia LURDE VEGA T/C/C VIZCAINO Y SU Parcial o Resolución en este LOURDES GUZMAN caso, que ha sido debidamente ESPOSA LEILA MABEL Demandada registrada y archivada en autos AVILES RODRIGUEZ, CIVIL NÚM. AR2020RF00579. donde podrá usted enterarse AMBOS POR SI Y EN SALÓN: SOBRE: DIVORCIO detalladamente de los términos (RUPTURA IRREPARABLE).

REPRESENTACION DE de la misma. Esta notificación se EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDIC- LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE publicará una sola vez en un peTO DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOBIENES GANANCIALES riódico de circulación general en CIADO DE PUERTO RICO. la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de COMPUESTA POR A: LOURDES VEGA, T/C/C los 10 días siguientes a su notifiAMBOS cación. Y, siendo o representado LURDE VEGA, T/C/C (Nombre de las partes a las que se les usted una parte en el procediLOURDES GUZMAN notifica la sentencia por edicto) sujeta a los términos de 11161 West Atlantic Blvd., EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscri- miento la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial be le notifica a usted que 19 de Apt. 25. Coral Springs, o Resolución, de la cual puede marzo de 2020, este Tribunal Florida 33071 establecerse recurso de revisión ha dictado Sentencia, SentenPOR LA PRESENTE se le emo apelación dentro del término cia Parcial o Resolución en este plaza para que presente al tride 30 días contados a partir de caso, que ha sido debidamente bunal su alegación responsiva a la publicación por edicto de esta registrada y archivada en autos la Demanda que se acompaña notificación , dirijo a usted esta donde podrá usted enterarse con este Emplazamiento dentro notificación que se considerará detalladamente de los términos d e los treinta (30) días de haber hecha en la fecha de la publicade la misma. Esta notificación se sido diligenciado este: Emplación de este edicto. Copia ele publicará una sola vez en un pezamiento, excluyéndose el día esta notificación ha sido archiriódico de circulación general en del diligenciamiento, notificando vada en los autos ele este caso, la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de copia de la misma al abogado con fecha de 24 de noviembre los 10 días siguientes a su notifi(a) de la parte Demandante o a de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puercación. Y, siendo o representado ésta, de no tener representación to Rico, el 24 de noviembre de usted una parte en el procedilegal. Usted deberá presentar su 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONmiento sujeta a los términos de alegación responsiva a través TE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial del Sistema Unificado de MaF/DAMARIS TORRES RUIZ, o Resolución, de la cual puede nejo y Administración de Casos Secretaria(a) Auxiliar. establecerse recurso de revisión (SUMAC), el cual puede acceder o apelación dentro del término LEGAL NOTICE utilizando la siguiente dirección de 30 días contados a partir de electrónica: http://unired.ramaEstado Libre Asociado de Puerla publicación por edicto de esta judicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL notificación , dirijo a usted esta represente por derecho propio, DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Prinotificación que se considerará en cuyo caso deberá presentar mera Instancia Sala Superior de hecha en la fecha de la publicasu alegación responsiva en la AÑASCO. ción de este edicto. Copia ele secretaría del tribunal. Si usted DEBRA THOMPSON esta notificación ha sido archideja de presentar su alegación vada en los autos ele este caso, ROSTOCYNSKY responsiva dentro del referido con fecha de 23 de noviembre Demandante Vs término, el tribunal podrá dictar de 2020. En CAROLINA, PuerPOPULAR MORTGAGE sentencia en rebeldía en su conto Rico, el 23 de noviembre de INC.; JUAN DEL PUEBLO tra y conceder el remedio solici2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONtado en la demanda, o cualquier Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO TE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio y cualesquier persona MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, de su sana discreción, lo entienSecretaria(a) Auxiliar. desconocida con posible de procedente. interés en la obligación VAZQUEZ & ASSOCIATES LEGAL NOTICE LAW OFFICES cuya cancelación por Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto LCDA. NICOLE MARIE Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE decreto judicial se solicita PEÑA CARTAGENA Demandado RUA 20300 JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera 379 Calle Cesar González Instancia Sala Superior de CA- Civil Núm.: AÑ2019CV00255.

Hato Rey, San Juan, PR 00918 Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAROLINA. Tel (787) 766-0949 / GARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFIJOSE ALBERTO LOPEZ Fax (787) 771-2425 CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Email: vazquezyasociadospr@ COLON SU ESPOSA ANA EDICTO. gmail.com LUZ LOZADA SANCHEZ A. JUAN DEL PUEBLO EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA T/C/C ANNIE LOZADA

Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO como posibles tenedores y cualesquier persona desconocida con posible interés en la obligación cuya cancelación por decreto judicial se solicita

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 18 de mayo de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación , dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia ele esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos ele este caso, con fecha de 24 de noviembre de 2020. En AÑASCO, Puerto Rico, el 24 de noviembre de 2020.

LCDA. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretaria. f/EVELYN PADILLA NIEVES, Secretaria(a) Auxiliar.

Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación , dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto.

Copia ele esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos ele este caso, con fecha de 25 de noviembre de 2020. En VEGA BAJA, Puerto Rico, el 25 de noviembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria.

ROSALBA PAGAN MARTINEZ, Secretaria(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.

BOSCO IX OVERSEAS, LLC BY FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION AS SERVICER Demandante v.

IVÁN ENRIQUE FERMAINT CARABALLO t/c/c IVÁN E. FERMAINT CARABALLO, XIOMARA IVETTE COLÓN DÍAZ t/c/c XIOMARA I. COLÓN DÍAZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CA2019CV02704.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA LEGAL NOTICE POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE A: LOS CODEMANDADOS JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera DE EPIGRAFE Y AL Instancia Sala Superior de VEGA PÚBLICO EN GENERAL: BAJA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la ORIENTAL BANK presente anuncia y hace constar Demandante Vs que en cumplimiento de una SenMIGDALIA LEBRON tencia dictada en el caso de epíMARBELT, JOHN DOE Y grafe 18 de diciembre de 2019, notificada el 22 de enero de 2020 RICHARD ROE y publicada el 24 de enero de Demandado Civil Núm.: VA2020CV00079. 2020 y de un Mandamiento de Sobre: SUSTITUCION DE PA- Ejecución emitido el día 19 de juGARE HIPOTECARIO. NOTIFI- nio de 2020, que ha sido dirigido CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR por la Secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior EDICTO. de Carolina, procederá a venA. JOHN DOE Y der en subasta, por separado, RICHARD ROE y al mejor postor con dinero en (Nombre de las partes a las que se les efectivo, cheque de gerente o notifica la sentencia por edicto) letra bancaria con similar garanEL SECRETARIO(A) que suscritía, todo título, derecho o interés be le notifica a usted que 4 de de los demandados de epígrafe noviembre de 2020, este Tribunal sobre el inmueble que adelante ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia se describe. Se anuncia por la Parcial o Resolución en este presente que la primera subasta caso, que ha sido debidamente habrá de celebrarse el día 13 de registrada y archivada en autos enero de 2021 a las 10:30 de la donde podrá usted enterarse mañana, en mi oficina localizada detalladamente de los términos en el edificio que ocupa la Sala de la misma. Esta notificación del Tribunal de Primera Instanse publicará una sola vez en un cia, Sala Superior de Carolina, periódico de circulación general sobre el inmueble que se desen la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro cribe a continuación: RUSTICA: de los 10 días siguientes a su Parcela marcada con el #316, notificación. Y, siendo o repreen el plano de parcelación de la sentado usted una parte en el Comunidad Rural Ramón T. Coprocedimiento sujeta a los térmilón, del barrio Quebrada Negrito nos de la Sentencia, Sentencia del término municipal de Trujillo

Alto, con una cabida superficial de 0.0992 cuerda, equivalente a 389.83 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con la calle 10 de la comunidad; por el Sur, con las parcelas 327 y 328 de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con la parcela 315 de la comunidad y por el OESTE, con la parcela 31 7 de la comunidad. FINCA: Número 14471 inscrita al folio 225 del tomo 285 de Trujillo Alto, Registro de la Propiedad, Sección IV de San Juan. Dirección fisica: Parcel 316 10th St. Ramon T. Colon, Trujillo Alto PR 00976. El siguiente pagaré consta inscrito en la propiedad antes mencionada y es el que se pretende ejecutar: HIPOTECA: Por $86,700.00, con intereses al 6.00% anual, en garantía de un pagaré a favor de R&G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico, que vence el 1ro de marzo de 2040. Según escritura #176, otorgada en San Juan, el 25 de febrero de 2010, ante Nancy Berríos Díaz, inscrita en virtud de la ley 216 del 201 O para agilizar el Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, al tomo Karibe de la Sección IV de San Juan, finca #14471 de Trujillo Alto, inscripción l 7ma., con fecha de 13 de marzo de 2018. La subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al demandante, total o parcialmente según sea el caso, de la referida sentencia que fue dictada por las siguientes sumas: $77,586.17 de principal, más intereses al tipo convenido al 6.000% anual, más recargos por todo pago en atraso, más la cantidad de $8,670.00 como cantidad estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato de préstamo. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LAS PARTES INTERESADAS y del público en general, se advierte que los autos de este caso y demás instancias están disponibles para ser inspeccionadas en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de Carolina, durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante, incluyendo el gravamen por las contribuciones sobre la propiedad inmueble adeudadas, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda responsable de los mismos sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá Libre de Cargas y Gravámenes posteriores. Los tipos mínimos a utilizarse para la subasta son los siguientes: el inmueble antes descrito ha sido tasado en la suma de OCHENTA Y SEIS SETECIENTOS DÓLARES ($86,700.00) para que dicha suma sirva de tipo mínimo en la primera subasta a celebrarse.

De no producirse remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del antedicho inmueble, se celebrará una segunda subasta en el mismo lugar antes mencionado,

The San Juan Daily Star el día 21 de enero de 2021 a las 10:30 de la mañana, sirviendo como tipo mínimo para dicha segunda subasta, una suma equivalente a las dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de CINCUENTA Y SIETE MIL OCHOCIENTOS DÓLARES ($57 ,800.00) para la finca antes descrita. De no producirse remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta del antedicho inmueble, se celebrará una tercera subasta en el mismo lugar antes mencionado, el día 28 de enero de 2021 a las 10:30 de la mañana, sirviendo como tipo mínimo para dicha tercera subasta, una suma equivalente a la mitad (1/ 2) del tipo mínimo fijado para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de CUARENTA Y TRES MIL TRESCIENTOS CINCUENTA DÓLARES ($43,350.00) para la finca antes descrita. En testimonio de lo cual, expido el presente aviso, el cual firmo y sello, hoy 24 de noviembre de 2020, en Carolina, Puerto Rico. Samuel Gonzalez Isaac, Alguacil.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS SALA SUPERIOR.

E.M.I. EQUITY MORTGAGE, INC DEMANDANTE VS.

MELVIN JAVIER ROQUE MARTÍNEZ

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: CG2019CV02472.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Embargo que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado o giro postal en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal, el día 14 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en B-11 CALLE NEPTUNO & APOLO URB. COLINAS DEL ESTE JUNCOS, PR 00777-4400 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar #11 del bloque B de la Urbanización Colinas del Este, radicado en el Barrio Ceiba del Municipio de Juncos, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 326.09 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en 16.79 metros, con la calle #2; por el

SUR, en 15.08 metros, con el lote #22; por el ESTE, en 18.55 metros, con la calle #3; y por el OESTE, en 22.00 metros, con el lote #10. Afecta a servidumbre de 5’ de ancho a favor de Puerto Rico Telephone Company a lo largo de sus colindancias Norte y Este. ENCLAVA: Una casa de hormigón, bloques y otros materiales dedicada a vivienda. El inmueble antes descrito consta inscrito al Folio 221 del Tomo 339 de Juncos, finca número 12802, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas Sección Segunda. El embargo a ejecutarse es por la suma de $147,709.36 y consta presentado al Asiento 2020-004793-CA02 del Sistema Karibe de Juncos, finca número 12802, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas Sección Segunda.

La hipoteca objeto del embargo a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura número 219 otorgada en Caguas, Puerto Rico, el día 5 de mayo de 2011, ante el Notario Reinaldo Segurola Pérez, la cual consta inscrita al Folio 221 del Tomo 339 de Juncos, finca número 12802, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas Sección Segunda, inscripción séptima (7ma). Dicha hipoteca fue modificada en cuanto a su principal que será de $127,628.64; en cuanto a su interés que será de 4.00% anual; en cuanto a su pago mensual de principal e interés será por la cantidad de $663.50, en cuanto a su vencimiento que será el primero (1ro) de junio de 2041; en cuanto al tipo mínimo en caso de ejecución de hipoteca será de $127,628.64; y en caso de reclamación judicial la cantidad líquida y estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado será de $12,762.86, según consta de la escritura de modificación de hipoteca número 504, otorgada el día 15 de septiembre de 2015, en San Juan, Puerto Rico ante la Notario Público Jaime E. Dávila Santini y consta presentada al Asiento 975 del Diario 684, finca número 12,802, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Segunda. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al Demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido contra la parte demandada, ascendente a la suma principal de $117,730.90 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de febrero de 2019, más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.00% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además, la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $12,762.86.

Además, la parte demandada se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $12,792.60 para

Tuesday, December 1, 2020 cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $12,792.60 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad está sujeta a los siguientes gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad. Aviso de Demanda de fecha (no expresa), expedido en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, en el caso civil número ECI-2014-0906, seguido por EMI Equity Mortgage, Inc., contra Melvin Javier Roque Martinez, soltero, por la suma de $121,790.92, anotado el día 17 de septiembre de 2015, al folio 60 del tomo 448 de Juncos, finca número 12,802, anotación A y última. AL ASIENTO 975 DEL DIARIO 685, se presentó el día 24 de noviembre de 2015, Orden de fecha 21 de octubre de 2015 y Mandamiento de fecha 5 de noviembre de 2015, expedidos en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, en el caso civil número ECI-2014-0906, mediante la cual se cancela Aviso de Demanda por la suma de $121,790.92 de la anotación A. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores desconocidos, no inscritos o presentados que sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal

expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020. EDGARDO ALDEBOL MIRANDA, Alguacil, Placa 282, Alguacil de Subastas, Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Caguas, Sala Superior.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS SALA SUPERIOR.

ORIENTAL BANK COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIO DE THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. DEMANDANTE VS.

HÉCTOR LUIS BRUGUERAS VEGA (DEUDOR HIPOTECARIO Y TITULAR REGISTRAL) HÉCTOR LUIS BRUGUERAS MARCELINO (TITULAR REGISTRAL)

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: CG2019CV02018.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR , en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el 19 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en: E-29 CALLE 2 URB. VILLA NUEVA CAGUAS, PR 00725 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar 29 del bloque E de la Urbanización Villa Nueva, situada en el barrio Turabo de Caguas, Puerto Rico, con un área de 357.60 metros cuadrados; colinda por el NORTE,

en 14.90 metros con la calle #2; por el SUR, en 14.90 metros, con los solares 19 y 39; por el ESTE, en 24.00 metros, con el solar 28; por el OESTE, en 24.00 metros, con el solar 30. ENCLAVA: Casa de concreto reforzado y bloques de concreto con fines residenciales. La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita al Folio 82 del Tomo 1,704 de Caguas, finca número 16,046, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera (1ra). El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $96,143.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 26 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $64,095.33. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 2 DE FEBRERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $48,071.50. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura número 107 otorgada en Caguas, Puerto Rico, el día 9 de marzo de 2017, ante el Notario Magaly Rodríguez Batista y consta inscrita Tomo Karibe de Caguas, finca número 16,046, inscripción vigésimo primera (21ra), Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera (1ra). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido contra la parte co-demandada Héctor Luis Brugueras Vega ascendente a la suma de $94,405.22 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de julio de 2018 más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.¾% anual.

Dichos interese continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además, la parte co-demandada Héctor Luis Brugueras Vega adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $9,614.30.

Además, la parte co-demandada Héctor Luis Brugueras Vega se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $9,614.30 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $9,614.30 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garan-

25

tizados por ley. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores desconocidos, no inscritos o presentados que sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020. EDGARDO ALDEBOL MIRANDA, PLACA 282, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS SALA SUPERIOR.

ORIENTAL BANK COMO AGENTE DE

SERVICIO DE THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. DEMANDANTE VS.

LA SUCESIÓN DE LUIS ANGEL RODRIGUEZ SANTANA COMPUESTA POR EILEEN RODRIGUEZ MARRERO Y LUIS ANGEL RODRIGUEZ MARRERO; FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN Y EL CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: CG2019CV03781.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el día 19 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:15 DE LA MAÑANA, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS. SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en ES-27 CALLE 25 URB. MIRADOR DE BAIROA CAGUAS, PR 00725 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización El Mirador de Bairoa, situado en el Barrio Bairoa de Caguas, marcado con el #27 de la manzana 2-S(Solar 27-28 según Escritura de Hipoteca), con un área de 371.80 metros cuadrados, en lindes por el NORTE, con los solares #38 y 39, distancia de 14.30 metros; por el SUR, con la calle #25, distancia de 14.30 metros; por el ESTE, con el solar #28, distancia de 26.00 metros; y por el OESTE, con el solar #26, distancia de 26.00 metros. ENCLAVA: Una vivienda de concreto para una sola familia. Consta inscrita al Folio 130 del Tomo 1048 de Caguas, finca número 35720, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas Sección Primera. La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita en el Folio 130 del Tomo 1048 de Caguas, finca número 35,720, en el Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $108,109.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la pri-

mera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 26 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:15 DE LA MAÑANA. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $72,072.66. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 2 DE FEBRERO DE 2021, A LAS 9:15 DE LA MAÑANA. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $54,054.50. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura número 434 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 25 de mayo de 2017, ante el Notario Alejandro J. Mues Arias, y consta inscrita al Tomo Karibe de la Sección Primera de Caguas, finca número 35,720, en el Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera, inscripción Sexta (6ta). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al Demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido ascendente a la suma de $104,980.39 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de junio de 2019, más intereses al tipo pactado de 5.00% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además, La Sucesión de Luis Ángel Rodríguez Santana adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $10,810.90.

Además, La Sucesión de Luis Ángel Rodríguez Santana se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $10,810.90 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $10,810.90 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado

26 en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según surge de las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad en un estudio de título efectuado a la finca antes descrita. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores desconocidos, no inscritos o presentados que sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020. EDGARDO ALDEBOL MIRANDA, PLACA 282, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS, SALA SUPERIOR.

LEGAL NOT ICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON SALA SUPERIOR.

ORIENTAL BANK COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIO DE THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. DEMANDANTE VS.

DANMARIS CRUZ GUZMÁN

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: BY2018CV03242.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de

un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR, , en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el día 19 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en: C-2183 CALLE PASEO ARPA URB. LEVITTOWN TOA BAJA, PR 00949 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar #2183 del bloque “C” de la Urbanización Levittown, en el barrio Sabana Seca de Toa Baja, compuesto de 310.50 metros cuadrados, en lindes por el NORTE, en 23.00 metros con el solar #2184; por el SUR, en 23.00 metros con el solar #2182; por el ESTE, en 13.50 metros con un paseo público y por el OESTE, en 13.50 metros con el Paseo Arpa (Calle #313, según plano). La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita al Folio 67 del Tomo 64 de Toa Baja, finca número 4,887, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Segunda (2da). El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $123,717.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 26 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $82,478.00. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 2 DE FEBRERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $61,858.50. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura de hipoteca número 38 otorgada en Carolina, Puerto Rico, el día 28 de febrero de 2017, ante el Notario Carlos Martínez Olmo y consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de Toa Baja, finca número 4,887, inscripción Octava (8va). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al Demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido contra la parte demandada ascendente a la suma de $121,644.71 por concepto de

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

principal, desde el 1ro de mayo de 2018, más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.75% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación.

Además, la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $12,371.70. Además, la parte demandada se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $12,371.70 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $12,371.70 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según surge de las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad en un estudio de título efectuado a la finca antes descrita. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores conocidos y desconocidos que tengan inscritos, no inscritos, presentados y/o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios

públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma en el Tribunal en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020. Firma Ilegible, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS. TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON SALA SUPERIOR.

ORIENTAL BANK COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIOS DE THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. DEMANDANTE VS.

GEOVANNIE RIVERA RAMOS Y JENNIFER BÁEZ BURGOS

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: BY2019CV02068.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR, , en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el día 19 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en: D-5 CALLE 2 URB. VICTORIA HEIGHTS, BAYAMON, PR 00959 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar #20 del bloque “Z”, radicado en la Urbanización Reparto Valencia, situada en el barrio Hato Tejas de Bayamón, con un área de 364.00 metros cuadrados; en lindes: por el NORTE, en 14.00 metros con la calle 1; por el SUR, en 14.00 metros con la Avenida Orquídea; por el ESTE, en 26.00 metros con el solar #21 y por el OESTE, en 26.00 metros con el solar #19. ENCLAVA: Una casa de concreto reforzado destinada a vivienda. La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita al Folio 21 del Tomo 1133 de Bayamón Sur, finca número 50,341, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Primera (1ra).

El tipo mínimo para la primera

subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $110,953.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 26 DE ENERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $73,968.66. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 2 DE FEBRERO DE 2021, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $55,476.50. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura de hipoteca número 42, otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día 29 de junio de 2016, ante la Notario Alfredo A. Infante Gutiérrez y consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de Bayamón Sur, finca número 50,341, en el Registro de a Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Primera (1ra), inscripción Sexta (6ta). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al Demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido contra la parte demandada ascendente a la suma de $107,151.50 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de noviembre de 2018, más intereses al tipo pactado de 5.00% anual.

Dichos intereses continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además, la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $11,095.30.

Además, la parte demandada se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $11,095.30 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $11,095.30 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la

responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según surge de las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad en un estudio de título efectuado a la finca antes descrita. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores conocidos y desconocidos que tengan inscritos, no inscritos, presentados y/o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma en el Tribunal en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de noviembre de 2020. Firma Ilegible, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON, SALA SUPERIOR.

Demandados CIVIL NUM. GB2020CV00646.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIEN TO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: ARNALDO LOPEZ LLOPIZ / MADELINE RIVERA RAMOS / SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Queden emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se alega que usted(es) le adeuda(n) a la demandante lo siguiente: La suma de $137,494.46 de principal mas los intereses sobre dichas sumas devengados desde el día 1 de octubre de 2017, mas aquellos a devengarse hasta el pago total de la deuda a razón 4.25000% anual, mas las primas de seguro hipotecario y riesgo, recargos por demora y cualesquiera otras cantidades pactadas en la escritura de hipoteca desde la fecha antes mencionada y hasta la fecha de! total pago de las mismas, mas la suma estipulada de $12,720.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado incurridos por concepto de un préstamo hipotecario. Se advierte que debe presentar al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los TREINTA (30) DIAS de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyendóse el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), el cual podrá acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria del tribunal.

Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro de! referido termino, el tribunal podrá LEGAL NOTICE dictar Sentencia en Rebeldía en ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE su contra y conceder el remePUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE dio solicitado en la Demanda, o PRIMERA INSTANClA SALA SU- cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el PERIOR DE GUAYNABO. ejercicio de su discreción, lo enNEWREZ LLC tiende procedente.

Tromberg Law Group D/B/A SHELLPOINT Lcda. Edmy Cortijo Villock MORTTGAGE SERVICING R.U.A. 18,126 Demandante v.

1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100 ARNALDO LOPEZ Boca Ratón , FL 33432 LLOPIZ; MADELINE Tel. 877-338-4101/Fax 561-338-4077 pr@tromberglawgroup.com RIVERA RAMOS; LA SOC!EDAD LEGAL DE De no recibir su contestación a dentro del termino BIENES GANANCIALES lade demanda treinta (30) días siguientes a COMPUESTA POR la fecha de publicación de este AMBOS;CENTRO edicto, la parte demandante podrá solicitar que se le anote la DE RECAUDACION rebeldía, y que se dicte sentenDE INGRESOS cia en su contra concediendo el MUNICIPALES; UNITED remedio solicitado en la demanSTATES OF AMERICA da, sin mas citarle ni oírle. Se

enviara al Demandado copia del Emplazamiento y la Demanda dentro del termino de diez (10) días de esta publicación a su ultima dirección conocida. EXPEDIDO BAJO Ml FIRMA, y el sello de este Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 16 de noviembre del 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Maireni Trinta, SubSecretario.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE FAJARDO.

INMOBILIARIA WITOCHE, LLC Demandantes Vs

Richard Rodríguez Robles, Moira Mora y la Sociedad L.egalde Gananciales que Constituyen

Demandadas CIVIL NÚM. SJ2020CV05051.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS. SS. Yo, Wanda Seguí Reyes, Secretario del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Puerto Rico, Sala de Fajardo, HAGO SABER: A: Richard Rodríguez Robles, Moira Mora y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales que Constituyen, PARTES DEMANDADAS, se les notifica que la parte Demandante de epígrafe ha radicado en esta Sala del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, una Demanda contra ustedes de cobro de dinero. Por la presente, SE LES EMPLAZA para que presenten ante el Tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro del término de TREINTA (30) días a partir de la fecha de la publicación de este EDICTO; notificando copia de la misma al abogado de la parte Demandante a la siguiente dirección: Lic. Manuel Fernández Mejías, PO BOX 725, Guaynabo, P.R. 00970-0725, teléfono 787-462-3502, correo electrónico: manuelgabrielfernandez@ gmail.com. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC) al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Se expide el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy día 9 de noviembre de 2020, en Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Wanda I. Segui Reyes, Sec Regional. Sheila Robles Hernández, Secretaria Auxiliar I.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

27

What we learned from Week 12 of the NFL season

By BENJAMIN HOFFMAN

W

ith the coronavirus sweeping through the NFL at a greater extent than it had all season, Week 12 had an uneasy edge to it, with several teams having to cobble together solutions brought by player absences that resulted from positive tests and close contacts. The league soldiered on, however, getting all 12 of Sunday’s games in regardless of the issues. But a Tuesday game in which as many as 20 Ravens players could be out because of a coronavirus outbreak still looms.

Here’s what we learned: — The Tennessee Titans know how to hammer a weakness. The Indianapolis Colts were dealt quite a blow when defensive tackle DeForest Buckner was ruled out of this game following a positive test for the coronavirus. The massive interior lineman has been a key part of Indianapolis’ stout defense, and without him — and with Indianapolis missing two other important starters on defense — the Colts had absolutely no answer for Derrick Henry, who rumbled for 178 yards and three touchdowns. All three of Henry’s touchdowns came in a laugher of a first half in which Tennessee went into the locker room leading 35-14. The rest of the game was merely a formality.

With the 45-26 win, the Titans (83) took sole possession of first place in the AFC South. They stand a good chance of holding onto that lead, as they face teams with losing records in three of their final five games.

— Denver didn’t stand a chance.

Despite not having a quarterback on the roster as a result of Jeff Driskel testing positive for the coronavirus and the team’s three other quarterbacks being ruled out as close contacts, the Broncos were thrown to the wolves against the red-hot New Orleans Saints. Denver running back Phillip Lindsay officially started at quarterback for Denver, but Kendall Hinton, a rookie wide receiver from the team’s practice squad, took the majority of snaps under center despite not having played the position regularly since 2017 — his third year in college at Wake Forest.

Hinton, who took the impossible assignment without complaint, completed just 1 of 9 passes for 13 yards, and was intercepted twice. The Broncos lost 31-3 and are likely wondering why the NFL, which has bent over backward to accommodate other teams that had virus-related issues this season, did not find a way to delay the game until a quarterback could be added to their roster.

— You can still see something new in an NFL game. In the third quarter of Carolina’s game against Minnesota, the Panthers’ Jeremy Chinn, a rookie linebacker, scooped up a Kirk Cousins fumble and returned it 17 yards for a touchdown. Carolina’s kickoff resulted in a touchback, and on the first play of the next series, as the broadcast crew attempted to recap Chinn’s previous touchdown, he helped force a Dalvin Cook fumble before picking the ball up and taking it 30 yards for his second score. Chinn became the first player with multiple fumble returns for a touchdown in a game since Fred Evans did it for Chicago in 1948. Chinn is also believed to be the first defensive player in NFL history to score touchdowns on consecutive snaps.

Somehow that 14-point swing, which resulted in the Panthers leading by 21-10 early in the second half, did not end with a Carolina victory. Minnesota chipped away at the lead and Cousins eventually found Chad Beebe for a 10-yard touchdown pass with just 46 seconds left in the game to secure a shocking 28-27 win at home.

— A game can go sideways on one play. The Las Vegas Raiders were 3-point favorites on the road in Atlanta, but after a slow first half, Las Vegas was trailing the Falcons 6-3 late in the second quarter. Things seemed to be turning the Raiders’ way when Atlanta’s Younghoe Koo missed a 40-yard field goal attempt wide right. Unfortunately for Las Vegas, safety Dallin Leavitt fell down at the end of the play and rolled into Koo, receiving a somewhat questionable roughing the kicker penalty.

Four plays later, Matt Ryan found wide receiver Calvin Ridley for a 4-yard touchdown pass.

From there the Falcons were off

Tennessee’s Derrick Henry absolutely dominated in a crucial win over Indianapolis that gave the Titans sole possession of first place in the A.F.C. South. to the races, taking advantage of four more Las Vegas turnovers after an earlier fumble. Atlanta repeatedly found ways to score after Raiders giveaways and walked away with a laughable 43-6 win.

— No one can cover Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill. Tampa Bay came into the season thinking its defense could power a deep playoff run, but Hill showed exactly how vulnerable the Buccaneers are to elite speed by burning the team for 203 yards receiving and two touchdowns — in the first quarter. It was the most receiving yards in a quarter for any player since 2006 and the most receiving yards in a game for a player all season. But Hill wasn’t done and finished the day with 13 catches on 15 targets for 269 yards and three touchdowns as the Chiefs held on to beat the Buccaneers 27-24.

In the must-see play of the game, Patrick Mahomes, who increasingly seems assured of winning his second career MVP award, completed a 75yard touchdown pass to Hill in which the ball traveled more than 60 yards in the air.

— Sam Darnold is not the answer for the New York Jets. With a 55-yard opening drive that ended in a 38-yard field goal, the winless Jets took a 3-0

lead over the Miami Dolphins. From there, things only went downhill. Darnold, in his first action since Week 8, was far less effective than Joe Flacco had been in his place, leading his team on drives that resulted in six punts, two interceptions, a missed field goal and a turnover on downs in which the ghost of Frank Gore was knocked back for a 1-yard loss on a fourth-and-1 play in the red zone. After that 3-0 start to the game, the Jets lost 20-3.

The 0-11 Jets have only one game remaining against a team that currently has a losing record.

— Aaron Rodgers is at the top of his game. Rodgers dominated Chicago by throwing four touchdown passes in a 41-25 victory, and in doing so he reached 50,000 yards passing for his career. In a postgame interview, Rodgers laughed off such feats, saying, “It means I’ve been playing a long time.

Some of those are longevity records.”

But it is worth remembering that Rodgers has significant career advantages over Brett Favre, the Hall of Fame quarterback he replaced in Green Bay, in rate-based statistics like touchdown percentage, interception percentage, adjusted net yards per attempt and winning percentage.

Continues on page 28

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

From page 27 Sunday’s Top Performers Top Passer: Patrick Mahomes In a season in which he continually seems to get better, Mahomes has had at least 30 completions and 300 yards passing in four consecutive games — an NFL record. His 462 yards passing Sunday were the second-most in his outrageous career, and 229 of them came in the first quarter. He is up to 3,497 yards passing and 30 touchdowns for the season and has thrown just two interceptions.

Top Runner: Derrick Henry Because of his size, many people assume Henry prefers to run inside the tackles, but the Titans’ star running back is equally adept at running to the outside. In Sunday’s dominant effort against Indianapolis, Henry gained 146 of his 178 yards rushing on runs outside the tackles, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats database, with all three of Henry’s touchdowns coming on outside runs to the right.

Top Receiver: Tyreek Hill Hill’s 269 yards receiving are tied with Del Shofner of the Giants for the 15th most in an NFL game and fell 67 short of Flipper Anderson’s record of 336, which was set for the Los Angeles Rams in 1989. While Calvin Johnson and Julio Jones have each topped 300, Anderson’s record has endured.

One* Sentence About Sunday’s Games *Except when it takes more.

Bills 27, Chargers 17: Buffalo’s defense did most of the heavy lifting in this win at home, but Josh Allen threw a 2-yard touchdown pass, and ran in a 3-yard score, giving him 15 career games with both a passing and a rushing touchdown. Allen trails only Cam Newton, who had 20, for the most such games in a player’s first three seasons.

Chiefs 27, Buccaneers 24: Patrick Mahomes threw for 462 yards and Tyreek Hill had 269 yards receiving, but of all those yards, the last 8 were potentially the most vital as the short pass from Mahomes to Hill with 1 minute, 15 seconds remaining gave Kansas City a first down and allowed the team to run out the clock in a game that had been slipping away from them.

Titans 45, Colts 26: Indianapolis got 295 yards passing from Philip Rivers, and two rushing touchdowns from backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett, but that wasn’t nearly enough to compete with Tennessee, which could have taken

Kendall Hinton, center, was a practice squad wide receiver as recently as last week. The rookie was forced into action at quarterback when all of Denver’s quarterbacks were placed on the Covid-19 reserve list. the entire second half off on offense and still won.

49ers 23, Rams 20: Running backs Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson returned from injury — a most welcome sight for San Francisco — but this upset was powered more by wide receiver Deebo Samuel, who had 11 catches for 133 yards, and defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw, who had a 27-yard pick-6.

Patriots 20, Cardinals 17: Arizona came into the day averaging 414.3 yards a game, but New England limited the Cardinals to a respectable 298. Kyler Murray was held without a touchdown pass for the first time since Dec. 1, 2019, 14 starts ago.

Browns 27, Jaguars 25: Florida’s warm weather helped wake up Cleveland’s passing game, with Baker Mayfield throwing for 258 yards and two touchdowns. But the Browns are unlikely to change their run-heavy approach going forward since Mayfield also missed badly on several other potential touchdowns while running back

Nick Chubb raced for 144 yards on 19 carries.

Vikings 28, Panthers 27: In one of the more impressive make-good moments you’ll see, Minnesota wide receiver Chad Beebe muffed the catch on a punt return late in the fourth quarter, letting Carolina extend its lead with a field goal, only to then score the go-ahead touchdown on his team’s ensuing possession.

Saints 31, Broncos 3: While Denver was limited to 13 yards passing, New Orleans managed just 78 in Taysom Hill’s second career start at quarterback. That will be plenty as long as the Saints’ running game can generate 229 yards and four touchdowns every week.

Packers 41, Bears 25: It was 41-10 in the third quarter when the Packers decided they had tried long enough and let Chicago do whatever it wanted for the rest of the game. The result was a final score that was far closer than the game ever felt, but it was easy to imagine Green Bay scoring 50 or more points if the team had kept pressing.

Giants 19, Bengals 17: Despite losing quarterback Daniel Jones to a hamstring injury in the third quarter, New York was able to fight its way past a Joe Burrow-less Cincinnati. Backup quarterback Colt McCoy didn’t do much, but the Giants scored three field goals following Jones’ injury, which was enough to secure the team’s third straight win. The 4-7 Giants were tied with Washington for first place in the NFC East before 3-6-1 Philadelphia’s game Monday against Seattle.

Falcons 43, Raiders 6: After Las Vegas’ loss last week, much of the talk centered on how well quarterback Derek Carr had played against Kansas City. He turned that narrative on its head by losing three fumbles and throwing a pick-6 in a humiliating loss to Atlanta.

Dolphins 20, Jets 3: Because of a thumb injury on Tua Tagovailoa’s throwing hand, Ryan Fitzpatrick was forced into a start against one of his many former teams, and he helped get Miami back on track following last week’s loss to Denver by throwing for 257 yards and two touchdowns.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

29

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

With a Lunar Eclipse bringing feelings to the surface that you may want to share, the way you put something across can be important over coming days.

With pushy Mars continuing in your sign and the Sun in Sagittarius, you could be at your most honest. Will this accomplish anything Aries? It will clear the air, but being mindful of another’s feelings is also helpful.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

A bill or expense might suddenly emerge and need paying. With a powerful influence across your money axis, you may need to do some negotiating if it is a large amount. Tempted by a scheme that looks good on the surface? Go easy, as it could drain away your cash. Today’s Eclipse offers a chance for a reset though, that can help you to get better control of your finances.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

With a Lunar Eclipse in Gemini and your sector of travel and far horizons, plans might not go as envisaged. Need to change your schedule? Maybe be fate is playing its hand, and this could lead to a fascinating encounter. A more sobering tie though, can see you eager to cut household expenses and find a way to make your money go further. With a few tweaks you might be better off.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

As the Moon opposes the Sun in Sagittarius, the resulting Lunar Eclipse could bring an emotional issue to the fore. Whatever circumstances seem to arise now, might be linked to feelings that are buried in the subconscious and that can be associated with certain experiences. Finding a way to gently release them may be cathartic, healing and very transformative.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Today’s Lunar Eclipse in your sign, could spotlight a relationship issue that may have niggled you for some time. If you feel like talking about it, then Mercury’s tie to Saturn can encourage a sobering and in-depth conversation. A shift in perspective might also be enough to change your outlook, and what seemed annoying or frustrating could be seen in an entirely new light.

Are you taking on too many projects, when deep down you sense that you should be cutting back? If so, things could come to a head over coming days, especially if you are pushing yourself beyond your limits. This can be the cosmos’s way of encouraging you to let go of certain responsibilities and tasks, and perhaps to delegate where possible and so make life easier.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

The Lunar Eclipse in your social zone could catch you unawares. Feelings may be running high, and this might encourage a showdown. But a more serious aspect encourages you to think things through rather than get involved in dramas. Ready to move in new circles? If you are looking to mingle with a whole new group, this can be the time when you seek alternative company.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

If a project or goal reaches completion over coming days, then make time to celebrate this accomplishment. This could also be a time to let it go, so you can prepare for your next project. However, a door may close regarding one ambition, and if so, then know that this is because another might be about to open. What comes next could be much better suited to you.

Relationships can require the tender touch over coming days, as a potent Lunar Eclipse in your opposite sign of Gemini, could highlight differences of opinion. While the words spoken may convey one thing, the feelings behind them might reveal something deeper. If you are prepared for an emotional conversation which may not be comfortable, then much can be resolved.

If you can cut back your schedule, then it may be wise to do so. The coming days might bring complications, and with powerful energies on the cards, there is a chance of impulsive decisions. If a job or other activity seems to have outgrown its usefulness, then you could be ready to drop it. But a prudent Mercury/Saturn tie suggests adopting a measured strategy regards any changes.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Feelings could get out of hand, as you may be drawn to someone in an intense way, even if this does not make logical sense to you. While this potential bond might be special, it’s unwise to jump into anything too soon. Take a few steps back Aquarius, and reconsider in a week or so. You don’t need to cut yourself off from them, but it helps not to get too entwined too quickly.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Have an opportunity to bask in the limelight? Issues at home could detract from this. Today’s lunation may find you dealing with something that leads to positive change. It might not seem like this at first, but over the coming weeks and months, there can be advantages that you hadn’t envisaged. Serious about a bold project? Liaising with friends could prove very helpful.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

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